Globalisation and the Dutch economy; a case study to the influence of the emergence of China and Eastern Europe on Dutch international trade

This paper investigates the impact of the emergence of China and Eastern Europe as increasingly important players on the world market for a small open economy such as the Netherlands. We describe and compare in detail revealed comparative advantages across the different country groups. This allows us to characterize the sectors in the Dutch economy that are most likely to experience enhanced competition in the face of globalization. This analysis is complemented with a gravity analysis that adds a second dimension to the competitive impact, viz. the extent to which markets are localized as opposed to global. We conclude that the overlap in revealed comparative advantages between China and the Netherlands is limited. The major impact of the emergence of China for Dutch trade is that it is likely to foster the position of the Netherlands as a gateway to Europe. Furthermore, we show that the overlap in comparative advantage between China and Eastern Europe is relatively large, implying that competition from Eastern Europe are likely to be stronger than from China.

Valuation of ethnic diversity:Heterogeneous effects in an integrated labor and housing market

We estimate the heterogeneous impact of the scale, composition and consumer good effect of ethnic diversity on individuals' job and residential location. Using an extensive pooled micro panel data set in which homeowners in the Netherlands are identified in both the housing and labor market, we can derive the combined effect of ethnic diversity in both markets. We test a model that integrates the utility and production function such that the location of work and residence is determined simultaneously by taking into account observed and unobserved heterogeneous individual behavior on both markets. We find that the scale of ethnic diversity, that is the share of immigrants, at the city level is mostly positively related to both wages and house prices. This is mainly through a positive productivity effect of immigrants, which results in negative implicit prices for housing (although small) in a city with a higher scale of ethnic diversity for the majority of the individuals in our data. The scale of ethnic diversity is only positively related to utility for a small group of homeowners, while the composition (diversity among immigrants) and the consumer good-effect (ethnic diversity of restaurants) of ethnic diversity show overall no significant effect on both markets nor significant implicit prices. Moreover, we find that the majority of Dutch homeowners do not sort themselves out over municipalities by their preferences for ethnic diversity

Spatial dynamics of cultural diversity in the Netherlands

In this paper, we analyse the spatial dimension of changing ethnic diversity at the neighbourhood level. Drawing from recent work on income convergence, we characterise the evolution of population diversity in the Netherlands over space. Our analysis is structured over three dimensions, which allow us to find clear spatial patterns in how cultural diversity changes at the neighbourhood level. Globally, we use directional statistics to visualise techniques of exploratory data analysis, finding a clear trend towards ‘spatially integrated change’: a situation where the trajectory of ethnic change in a neighbourhood is closely related to that in adjacent neighbourhoods. When we zoom into the local level, a visualisation of recent measures of local concordance allows us to document a high degree of spatial heterogeneity in how the overall change is distributed over space. Finally, to further explore the nature and characteristics of neighbourhoods that experience the largest amount of change, we develop a spatial, multilevel model. Our results show that the largest cities, as well as those at the boundaries with Belgium and Germany, with the most diverse neighbourhoods, have large clusters of stable neighbourhood diversity over time, while concentrations of high dynamic areas are nearby these largest cities. The analysis shows that neighbourhood diversity spatially ‘spills over’, gradually expanding outside traditionally diverse areas

Labour market forecasts by education and occupation up to 2022

As part of the Education and Labour Market Project (POA) , the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) develops a number of research activities aimed at a better understanding of the medium-term developments in supply and demand on the Dutch labour market. These activities include analyses of the match between skills supply and demand, the development of labour market indicators for the current equilibrium between supply and demand, and labour market forecasts of supply and demand by industry, occupation, education, and region

Aansluiting Technisch Onderwijs en de Arbeidsmarkt

Er is een grote vraag naar gediplomeerden met een technische achtergrond op de arbeidsmarkt. ROA becijfert dat er de komende 6 jaar bijna 340.000 baanopeningen zijn voor technische en ICT-beroepen (ROA 2017a). Gezien de instroom van schoolverlaters met een technisch diploma naar verwachting zal groeien, maar nog onvoldoende hoog is, wordt het voor werkgevers steeds moeilijker om voldoende technisch personeel te vinden. ROA verwacht dat werkgevers de komende 6 jaar voor 87% van hun vraag naar ICT-beroepen, en 66% van hun vraag naar technische beroepen te maken krijgt met grote knelpunten