Pension Participants’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Emotional Responses to the New Dutch Pension System

As of 2022, the Dutch pension system will be overhauled. The success of this as well as other pension reforms also depends on how participants react to and accept such changes. We therefore studied participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and emotions toward the new pension system. We composed a text to inform them about the new system and qualitatively analyzed their responses. We investigated which beliefs and attitudes prevail among different age groups. The results show that many participants base their comments on previous experiences, misconceptions and (sometimes false) interpretations of the information in the text. Moreover, we find that young people are more optimistic, whilst older participants tend to feel victimized. Since the new Dutch pension rules have yet to be introduced, the results of our study contain valuable information for policymakers and pension funds who should acknowledge and address the oftentimes intense emotions, beliefs, and attitudes that influence the way that intentionally neutral information is perceived and accepted. A diversified communication strategy, mindful of different beliefs, emotions and attitudes among participants should help to empower citizens to get insight in their financial situation after retirement and to make informed choices.

Household Preferences for Investing in Crowdfunding

Using representative survey data on the Dutch population, we analyze households’ actual participation and stated preferences for crowdfunding involvement at the extensive and intensive margin, with emphasis on the relation with investing in socially responsible assets. We find that crowdfunding investors are higher educated and more future oriented than others, whereas risk aversion plays a negative but insignificant role. Financial literacy is positively associated with knowing about crowdfunding, but not with actual participation. A stated choice preference experiment largely confirms these relations. At the intensive margin, however, results are rather different: Women have a stronger preference for crowdfunding than men do. Financial literacy reduces the preferred share invested in crowdfunding. We find a strong positive relation between crowdfunding and socially responsible investing. We identify several common factors: a desire to contribute to improving society and a lack of confidence in traditional financial institutions. Comparing stated and revealed preferences, we find that the potential for attracting more crowdfunding funders is much smaller than for attracting socially responsible investors.

Out of Sync Subnational Housing Markets and Macroprudential Policies in the UK

We examine whether regionally differentiated macroprudential policies can address financial stability concerns and moderate house price differences in the UK. We disaggregate both the household sector and the housing stock in a two-region DSGE model with out of sync subnational housing markets and compare four policy types: standard monetary policy, leaning against the wind monetary policy, national macroprudential policy or one that targets region-specific LTV ratios. In terms of reducing variances of house prices, regionally differentiated macroprudential policy performs best, provided the policy authorities are concerned with stabilising output and house prices rather than simply minimising the variance of inflation.

Know More, Spend More? The Impact of Financial Literacy on Household Consumption

This paper examines the relationship between household consumption and financial literacy. The economic framework is a simple life-cycle model of consumption in which financial literacy affects the rate of return on assets. The theoretical predictions are that, for plausible values of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution, financial literacy is positively related to both the level of consumption and consumption growth. We empirically test these theoretical predictions with Dutch data from the LISS household panel. Our results provide evidence in favour of a positive association between non-durable consumption, and in particular food consumption, and financial literacy. No evidence is, however, found in favour of an association between consumption growth and financial literacy.

Trends in Wage Inequality in the Netherlands

In this paper I analyze changes in the wage distribution in the Netherlands. I use a matched employer-employee dataset that covers the population of employees. Wage inequality increases over the period of 2001–2016. Changes in between-firm wage components are responsible for nearly the entire increase. Increases in the variance of workers’ skills and increases in worker sorting and worker segregation explain the majority of the rise in the variance of wages. These changes are accompanied by a pattern where variation in educational degree and firm average wages become more correlated over time. Finally, it is suggested that labor market institutions in the Netherlands play an important role in mediating overall wage inequality.

The Relationship Between Firm Productivity, Wage Level and Employees’ Age: A Sectoral Perspective

We examine how a firm’s productivity level, wage level and productivity–wage gap are related to the age composition of its employees. Panel data of Norwegian firms in the following three sectors are used: the manufacturing sector, the WRT (wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles) sector, and the PST (professional, scientific and technical activities) sector. Three hypotheses are formulated: a firm’s productivity level is negatively affected by its proportion of the oldest workers (H1), a firm’s wage level is negatively affected by its proportion of the youngest workers, and positively affected by its proportion of the oldest workers (H2), and a firm’s productivity–wage gap is positively affected by its proportion of the youngest workers, and negatively affected by its proportion of the oldest workers (H3). Based on GMM regression in first differences, the estimation results give some support for (a) the hypothesis H1 for the WRT sector, but no support for the manufacturing and PST sectors, (b) H2 for the manufacturing and PST sectors, but little support for the WRT sector, and (c) H3 for the PST sector, but no support for the manufacturing and WRT sectors. The GMM results show that a firm’s productivity–wage gap is positively affected by the proportion of the youngest age group in the PST sector, while there is a non-significant effect in the manufacturing and WRT sectors. The proportion of the oldest age group has a non-significant effect on this gap in each of the three sectors. The results indicate that there is no clear evidence of an age-related productivity–wage gap.

COVID-19 and the Demand for Online Grocery Shopping: Empirical Evidence from the Netherlands

There has been a pronounced increase in online shopping since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the effect of the pandemic on demand for online grocery shopping specifically, using municipality-level data from a Dutch online supermarket. We find that an additional hospital admission increased app traffic by 7.3 percent and sales per order by 0.31 percent. Local hospital admissions do not correlate with the variety of groceries ordered, but online search behavior does, suggesting that hoarding behavior is driven by the general perception and impact of the virus rather than local conditions. Local COVID-19 conditions also have different effects in urban versus non-urban municipalities, with local hospital admissions increasing app traffic in urban areas but lowering sales per order as compared to non-urban areas. It remains to be seen whether the demand for online grocery shopping will permanently increase as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.