Publications

We show that gifts made to heirs before death are substantial and highly responsive to taxation. Therefore, characterising them and understanding their determinants is crucial for tax design. We use high-quality, intergenerationally-linked data on wealth, gifts, and medical expenses from the Netherlands. Exploiting variation in the timing of death, we find that the wealthiest half of singles (including widows) with children transfer over 10% of their wealth to their children in anticipation of death. Giving is highly sensitive to how heavily gifts are taxed, relative to bequests. →

How high is income inequality in the Netherlands? How progressive are taxes and how much income does government spending redistribute? This study presents the most exhaustive responses for the Netherlands to these... →

Contrary to other studies, we find no robust effect of an increase in trade with China and Central European (CEE) countries on local employment, wages and inequality in the Netherlands.... →

This paper uses the financial statements of special purpose entities (SPEs) for explaining the origin and destination of dividend, interest, and royalty flows passing the Netherlands. →

We typically do not find statistically signicant evidence of bunching around kinks or notches, neither in income nor in wealth. →

The Netherlands is an important link in the chain of diverting income flows: broader use of withholding taxes is necessary to combat international tax avoidance. →

This CPB Background Document addresses whether, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, default probabilities of firms that depend more on external finance were affected more negatively than default probabilities of less dependent firms. →

Olivier Blanchard’s and Daniel Leigh’s work on growth forecast errors and fiscal multipliers in 2009-2011 has been highly influential. →