Pension plans and the retirement replacement rates in the Netherlands

This study compares the expected retirement replacement rates of several cohorts of Dutch employees at the time of their planned retirement with the 'actual' replacement rates based on available pension records. We find that using reasonable indexation rates, the expected replacement rates�are higher than the one we compute. Larger discrepancies are found for younger cohorts. We decompose the difference between the expected and 'actual' replacement rates and find that the mismatch is related to poor institutional knowledge for the whole sample. We also show the role of assumptions on institutions and on wage profiles in determining our results.

StOCNET:Software for the statistical analysis of social networks

StOCNET3 is an open software system in a Windows environment for the advanced statistical analysis of social networks. It provides a platform to make a number of recently developed and therefore not (yet) standard statistical methods available to a wider audience. A flexible user interface utilizing an easily accessible data structure is developed such that new methods can readily be included in the future. As such, it will allow researchers to develop new statistical tools by combining their own programs with routines of the StOCNET system, providing a faster availability of newly developed methods. In this paper we show the current state of the developments. The emphasis is on the implementation and operation of the programs that are included in StOCNET: BLOCKS (for stochastic blockmodeling), p2 (for analyzing binary network data with actor and/or dyadic covariates), SIENA (for analyzing repeated measurements of social networks), and ZO (for calculating probability distributions of statistics). Moreover, we present an overview of future contributions, which will be available in the near future, and of planned activities with respect to the functionality of the StOCNET software. StOCNET is a freeware PC program, and can be obtained from the StOCNET website at http://stat.gamma.rug.nl/stocnet/