Benedikt Goderis

The Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP)

Food aid has become an integral part of welfare states across Europe, which was particularly striking during the socio-economic COVID-19 crisis. So far, however, there has been little cross-national research on how food aid is organised and embedded in European welfare arrangements. The international project "Food aid in Europe in times of the COVI...

The Dutch Cabinet is preparing a national action plan 2022-2025 for the prevention of poverty and excessive indebtedness among Dutch households. Its focus will be on feasible and promising interventions that have been proven effective. In this article (in Dutch) we identify four necessary steps for succes.

Op basis van de in dit hoofdstuk gepresenteerde analyses kan worden geconcludeerd dat de bijstandsuitkeringen geen universele garantie bieden op een naar Nederlandse maatstaven minimaal bestaan. Vanuit dat perspectief bezien, voldoet de bijstandsuitkering niet aan de in de inleiding van het boek genoemde criteria voor rechtvaardigheid. Daarbij valt...

Government debt, fiscal sustainability and the EMU balance play a key role in the debate on Dutch budgetary policy. While these variables are important, a growing number of academics and policymakers argue that policy should be based more explicitly on multidimensional well-being and sustainability concepts that go beyond traditional economic measu...

This chapter looks into two generalised reference budgets for measuring poverty in the Netherlands. The first, a “Basic Needs” budget, is based on the expenses that can be regarded as the minimum necessary standard in the Netherlands. The second is a Modest but Adequate (MBA) reference budget, which is more generous and takes into account the minim...

Annual report on poverty in the Netherlands; best viewed as interactive 'card stack' at digitaal.scp.nl/armoedeinkaart2019

Annual report on poverty in the Netherlands; best viewed as interactive 'card stack' at digitaal.scp.nl/armoedeinkaart2018

Annual report on poverty in the Netherlands; best viewed as interactive 'card stack' at digitaal.scp.nl/armoedeinkaart2016/

This report examines the inputs, outputs and outcomes of the public sector in 36 countries (including the EU-28) over the period 1995-2012. We study two sectors – education and health – in some detail, while taking a more general look at the sectors social safety, housing, social security and public administration, and a preliminary look at the sec...

Constitutions are commonly regarded as uniquely national products, shaped by domestic ideals and politics. This paper develops and empirically investigates a novel hypothesis, which is that constitutions are also shaped by transnational influence, or “diffusion.” Constitutional rights can diffuse through four mechanisms: coercion, competition, lear...

INTRODUCTION: Constitutions are commonly transported across national borders. In the nineteenth century, a whole generation of Latin American constitutions was copied largely verbatim from the U.S. Constitution, in what Simon Bolivar dubbed a “craze for imitation” (Horowitz 2009: 505; Billias 2009: 105). Around that same time, the founding fathers...

Constitutions are commonly regarded as uniquely national products, shaped by domestic ideals and politics. This paper develops and empirically tests a novel hypothesis, which is that constitutions are also shaped by transnational influence, or “diffusion.” Constitutional rights can diffuse through four mechanisms: coercion, competition, learning an...

Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of higher commodity prices onthe long-run growth of commodity exporters is ambiguous, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise income in the short run. In this paper we adopt panel error correction methodology to analyze global data for 1963 to 2008...

After 9/11, the United States and its allies took measures to protect their citizens from future terrorist attacks. While these measures aim to increase security, they have often been criticized for violating human rights. But violating rights is difficult in a constitutional democracy with separated powers and checks and balances. This paper empir...

Constitutions are commonly described as inherently national products, shaped by domestic politics and reflecting the views and values of the nation. This paper develops and empirically tests a different hypothesis, which is that constitutions are also shaped by transnational influences, or “diffusion.” Constitutional provisions can diffuse through...

Surprisingly little is known about the impact of resource booms on income inequality in resource rich countries (Ross, 2007). This paper develops a simple theory, in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning-by-doing drives growth, to explain the time path of inequality following a resource boom. Under plausible conditions, we find...

The authors investigate the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, they find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem to matter. They also find that both the level of aid a...

Developing countries frequently face large adverse shocks to their economies. We study two distinct types of such shocks: large declines in the price of a country's commodity exports and severe natural disasters. Unsurprisingly, adverse shocks reduce the short-term growth of constant-price GDP and we analyse which structural policies help to minimi...

The credit derivatives market provides a liquid but opaque forum for secondary market trading of banking assets. I show that when entrepreneurs rely upon the certification value of bank debts to obtain cheap bond market insurance, the existance of a credit derivatives market may cause them to issue sub-investment grade bonds instead, and to engage...

This paper empirically examines the effect of monetary policy on exchange rates during currency crises. We find strong evidence that raising the interest rate: (i) has larger adverse balance sheet effects and is therefore less effective in countries with high domestic corporate short-term debt; (ii) is more credible and therefore more effective in...

Currently, evidence on the 'resource curse' yields a conundrum. While there is much crosssection evidence to support the curse hypothesis, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise the growth of commodity exporters. This paper adopts panel cointegration methodology to explore longer term eff...

The management of oil revenues is the past, present and future of macroeconomic policy in Nigeria. As Paul Collier describes (Chapter 2), the long history of fiscal mismanagement of oil booms in Nigeria saw the Central Bank of Nigeria’s ability to pursue a coherent monetary policy severely circumscribed. Without the support of a disciplined and bro...

Kraay (2003) documents the lack of any systematic association between monetary policy and the outcome of a speculative attack. This paper revisits Kraay’s work and modifies it by introducing an improved measure of monetary policy and an additional country-specific fundamental, short-term corporate debt, to capture balance sheet vulnerabilities emph...

This paper studies how the exposure of a country's corporate sector to interest rate and exchange rate changes affects the probability of a currency crisis. To analyze this question, we present a model that defines currency crises as situations in which the costs of maintaining a fixed exchange rate exceed the costs of abandonment. The results show...

Appeared in World Economics Journal (June 2007): Those low-income countries that export non-agricultural commodities are in the midst of a resource transfer. It is undoubtedly the biggest opportunity for transformative development that these societies have experienced, dwarfing both aid and previous commodity booms. To get it in proportion, in 2004...

One of the most important recent innovations in financial markets has been the development of credit derivative products that allow banks to more actively manage their credit portfolios than ever before. We analyse the effect that access to these markets has had on the lending behaviour of a sample of banks, using a sample of banks that have not ac...

The management of oil revenues is the past, present and future of macroeconomic policy in Nigeria. As Paul Collier’s paper in this workshop describes (Collier, 2006), the long history of fiscal mismanagement of oil booms in Nigeria severely proscribed the Central Bank of Nigeria’s ability to pursue a coherent monetary policy. Without the support of...

This paper studies how the exposure of a country’s corporate sector to interest rate and exchange rate changes affects the probability of a currency crisis. To analyze this question, we present a model that defines currency crises as situations in which the costs of maintaining a fixed exchange rate exceed the costs of abandonment. The results show...

One of the most important recent innovations in financial markets has been the development of credit derivative products that allow banks to more actively manage their credit portfolios than ever before. We analyze the effect that access to these markets has had on the lending behavior of a sample of banks, using a sample of banks that have not acc...

In this paper we investigate how a wide array of types of shock arising from world prices, natural events, and political violence affect growth. Our results suggest that the impact from political shocks are far greater than from natural shocks. However, our preliminary cointegration results suggest that the cost from primary commodity exporting are...

This paper studies how the exposure of a country's corporate sector to interest rate and exchange rate changes affects the probability of a currency crisis. To analyze this question, we present a model that defines currency crisis as situations in which the costs of maintaining a fixed exchange rate exceed the costs of abandonment. The results show...

This paper calculates indices of central bank autonomy (CBA) for 163 central banks as of end-2003, and comparable indices for a subgroup of 68 central banks as of the end of the 1980s. The results confirm strong improvements in both economic and political CBA over the past couple of decades, although more progress is needed to boost political auton...

The literature on the impact of monetary policy on exchange rates during financial crises is divided. The traditional view argues that higher interest rates discourage capital outflows and appreciate the exchange rate. By contrast, the revisionist view argues that higher interest rates deteriorate corporate balance sheets, increase the likelihood o...