recent changes in the social rented sector in the netherlands the netherlands has a large and differentiated stock of social rented dwellings forming more than 40 per cent of the total housing stock housing associations are by far the largest providers of housing services in this sector traditionally these associations were subsidised heavily but since 1995 dutch government has no longer directly subsidised these associations this paper deals with changes in dutch housing associations in a period 1988 95 characterised by government austerity deregulation market conformity privatisation and promotion of home ownership it is explained how the housing associations were able to survive and even maintain prospects for a promising future in a political climate that threatened the social rented sector it is clear that housing associations can now operate more independently than in the past this is seen as a positive development but the government is now discovering the drawbacks of complete privatisation a firmer embedding in a public framework is considered

price output and exchange rate movements in the open economy abstract since the advent of managed floating it has come to be accepted as a stylized fact that short run deviations from purchasing power parity are both substantial and persistent two explanations of these deviations have been advanced in the literature one emphasizes the role of changes in non traded goods prices while the other views deviations from purchasing power parity as being due to sticky goods prices and slow adjustment of goods markets this paper presents yet a third possible explanation of deviations from purchasing power parity they may be necessary in order to facilitate the relative price changes that are required to maintain equilibrium in the face of unanticipated shocks in addition the issue of exchange rate overshooting is addressed whereas the sticky price models view exchange rate overshooting and exchange rate volatility as symptoms of some fundamental disequilibrium the perspective taken here is that these events are in principle compatible with a world in which all markets clear continuously

exchange rate rules and macroeconomic stability this paper discusses exchange rate rules in their role as macroeconomic instruments we abstract throughout from the trend part of exchange rate behaviour a crawling peg necessitated by differences in trend inflation and emphasise instead the implications of exchange rate rules in providing flexibility of real wages or in affecting the stability of output or prices

teacher characteristics and academic achievement identifying the impact of teacher characteristics on academic achievement has been a salient and reoccurring topic in education we employ a twin by year identification strategy using matched teach

long term neighborhood effects on low income families evidence from moving to opportunity abstract we examine long term neighborhood effects on low income families using data from the moving to opportunity mto randomized housing mobility experiment this experiment offered to some public housing families but not to others the chance to move to less disadvantaged neighborhoods we show that ten to 15 years after baseline mto i improves adult physical and mental health ii has no detectable effect on economic outcomes or youth schooling or physical health and iii has mixed results by gender on other youth outcomes with girls doing better on some measures and boys doing worse despite the somewhat mixed pattern of impacts on traditional behavioral outcomes mto moves substantially improve adult subjective well being

the unintended effects of place based programs fertility and health effects of urban empowerment zones abstract whether place based welfare programs affect fertility and health outcomes is an understudied question i estimate the health impacts of the empowerment zone ez program a federal program that gave sizeable grants and tax breaks to certain high poverty census tracts in selected cities using difference in differences methods i find that the ez program decreased fertility rates by 11 percent and improved birth outcomes compositional changes in fertility likely cannot explain changes in infant health recent research on the later life impacts of low birth weight suggest that the health impacts of this program may have substantial long term benefits

financial and social returns in housing asset management theory and dutch housing associations practice this paper discusses how financial and social returns can be measured in relation to asset management in dutch housing associations the potential applications of performance measurement in housing asset management are assessed as well as the indicators that can be used to measure financial and social returns an explorative survey among dutch housing associations indicates that practice is poorly developed as far as the measurement of financial return is concerned a few associations operate in accordance with the theoretical ideal however many of them still follow a traditional book keeping approach which is unsuitable for supporting asset management decisions as far as social return is concerned the survey indicates that although associations collect a lot of data they do not really evaluate their performance by comparing their output against pre set targets or benchmarks the poorly developed evaluation of performance makes it difficult for housing associations to achieve the various objecti

teachers pay for performance in the long run the dynamic pattern of treatment effects on students educational and labour market outcomes in adulthood this paper examines the dynamic effects of a teachers pay for performance experiment on long term outcomes at adulthood the program led to a gradual increase in university education of the treated high school students reaching an increase of 0 25 years of schooling by age 28 30 the effects on employment and earnings were initially negative coinciding with a higher rate of enrollment in university but became positive and significant with time these gains are largely mediated by the positive effect of the program on several high school outcomes including quantitative and qualitative gains in the high stakes matriculation exams

exchange rate dynamics an empirical investigation this paper estimates a reduced form exchange rate equation whose estimates are used to address questions on exchange rate overshooting intermediate run exchange rate dynamics and long run proportionality relationships between relative money supplies and exchange rates based on swiss u s data from the period 1973 79 the major findings are that following a monetary shock there is short run exchange rate overshooting by a factor of about two and that subsequent exchange rate adjustments to a new long run equilibrium take longer than 2 years and exhibit nonmonotonic patterns

income inequality and income segregation this article investigates how the growth in income inequality from 1970 to 2000 affected patterns of income segregation along three dimensions the spatial segregation of poverty and affluence race specific patterns of income segregation and the geographic scale of income segregation the evidence reveals a robust relationship between income inequality and income segregation an effect that is larger for black families than for white families in addition income inequality affects income segregation primarily through its effect on the large scale spatial segregation of affluence rather than by affecting the spatial segregation of poverty or by altering small scale patterns of income segregation

output variability under monetary policy and exchange rate rules this paper examines the controversy concerning the relative desirability of fixed versus flexible exchange rates by examining whether a country can achieve a smaller variance of domestic output around its full employment path operating under an exchange rate rule or under a money supply rule the paper finds that neither policy will always dominate the other however it does find that if shocks in one market of the economy are large relative to shocks to other markets then one type of rule can be shown to dominate the other

strategic asset management in the social rented sector approaches of dutch and english housing associations in england and the netherlands in response to changes in housing policy and the market there is widespread enthusiasm for asset management in the social rented sector a key issue in both countries is the development of a strategic approach towards the formulation of asset management plans the paper examines this issue in relation to the current practice of housing associations in both countries drawing on case studies in england and the netherlands it is concluded that in both countries practice varies widely between housing associations some of the approaches adopted by front runners can be seen as models for other associations yet to develop a strategic approach towards asset management lessons can also be learnt across national boundaries though necessarily mediated by differences between the two housing systems

exchange rate determination an equilibrium approach with imperfect capital substitutability abstract two stylized facts of the open economy are often considered prima facie evidence of goods market disequilibrium persistent deviations of relative prices from purchasing power parity and the higher variability of the nominal exchange rate relative to price levels we develop an equilibrium model characterized by imperfect goods and asset substitutability across countries and show how it is consistent with the aforementioned stylized facts we also show that increases in the degree of risk aversion of speculators leads to higher exchange rate variance if shocks are monetary

the effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children new evidence from the moving to opportunity experiment the moving to opportunity mto experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high poverty housing projects to lower poverty neighborhoods we analyze mto s impacts on children s long term outcomes using tax data we find that moving to a lower poverty neighborhood when young before age 13 increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts perhaps because of disruption effects the decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children s long term outcomes jel i31 i38 j13 r23 r38

social housing neighborhood quality and student performance children who grow up in deprived neighborhoods underperform at school and later in life but whether there is a causal link remains contested this study estimates the short term effect of very deprived neighborhoods characterized by a high density of social housing on the educational attainment of fourteen years old students in england to identify the causal impact this study exploits the timing of moving into these neighborhoods i argue that the timing can be taken as exogenous because of long waiting lists for social housing in high demand areas using this approach i find no evidence for negative short term effects on teenage test scores

tests of equilibrium macroeconomics using contemporaneous monetary data abstract this paper uses contemporaneous monetary data to carry out econometric tests of the equilibrium approach to modelling the relation between monetary disturbances and macroeconomic fluctuations the theoretical analysis introduces into an equilibrium macroeconomic model the availability of preliminary data on current monetary aggregates and the process of accumulation of revised monetary data the econometric analysis tests two hypothesis derived from this extended model one hypothesis concerns the neutrality of perceived monetary policy the econometric results imply rejection of this hypothesis the other hypothesis concerns the non neutrality of errors in preliminary monetary data the econometric results fail to reject the contrary of this hypothesis these tests provide strong evidence against the reality of the equilibrium approach

house price growth when children are teenagers a path to higher earnings abstract this paper examines whether rising house prices immediately prior to children entering college have an impact on their earnings as adults higher house prices provide homeowners with additional funding to invest in their children s human capital but also raise housing costs the results show that a 1 percentage point increase in house prices when children are 17 years old results in roughly 0 9 percent higher annual income for the children of homeowners and 1 5 percent lower annual income for the children of renters house price appreciation at age 17 also leads to higher college enrollment rates at age 19 and an increased likelihood of attendance at higher ranked post secondary institutions for children of homeowners as well as lower college enrollment rates for children of renters

neighborhood effects on crime for female and male youth evidence from a randomized housing voucher experiment the moving to opportunity mto demonstration assigned housing vouchers via random lottery to public housing residents in five cities we use the exogenous variation in residential locations generated by mto to estimate neighborhood effects on youth crime and delinquency the offer to relocate to lower poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for violent and property crimes relative to a control group for males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime at least in the short run but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests the gender difference in treatment effects seems to reflect differences in how male and female youths from disadvantaged backgrounds adapt and respond to similar new neighborhood environments

social rented housing in western europe developments and expectations what lies ahead for the social rented sector in western europe do countries differ merely in degree or do differences between countries offer grounds on which to sketch divergent scenarios for th

insuring well being buyer s remorse and peace of mind effects from insurance this paper estimates the causal effects of index insurance coverage on subjective well being among livestock herders in southern ethiopia the randomization of incentives to purchase index based livestock insurance and three rounds of panel data are exploited to separately identify ex ante welfare gains from insurance that reduces risk exposure and ex post buyer s remorse effects that may arise after the resolution of uncertainty insurance coverage currently in force generates subjective well being gains that are significantly higher than the buyer s remorse effect of an insurance that lapsed without paying out given the temporal correlation in insurance purchase propensity failure to control for potential buyer s remorse effects can bias downward estimates of welfare gains from current insurance coverage

exchange rate dynamics abstract dornbusch and stock flow models are tested using time series data on the swiss u s exchange rate efficient estimates of the models are derived and the overidentifying restrictions tested in each case the restrictions implied by the dornbusch model are rejected but those of the stock flow model are not purchasing power parity in the long run is a feature of the stock flow model

financial literacy externalities this paper uses unique administrative data and a quasi field experiment of exogenous allocation to apartments in sweden to estimate medium and longer run effects on financial behavior from exposure to financially literate neighbors it contributes evidence of causal impact of financial literacy and points to a social multiplier of effective programs to enhance it exposure promotes saving in private retirement accounts and stockholding especially when neighbors have economics or business education but only for educated or male headed households findings point to relevant knowledge transfer through social interactions rather than to labor market or other channels linked to local economic conditions