Ethnic diversity in the Netherlands is increasing. Urban areas have traditionally been the most diverse. Growing ethnic diversity at the national and regional level does, however, not necessarily translate into multicultural neighbourhoods in cities. At the neighbourhood level, concentration of specific ethnic groups seems to be the more dominant trend. This evokes the question whether…

The quality of social housing leaves much to be desired, as a recent report by the NOS points out. There are plans to heavily invest in renovation of social housing. From 2007 to 2012, government and housing associations already invested more than 1 billion – in addition to the regular investments – in the 83 poorest…

Biofuels help reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. In their attempts to meet agreements on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, governments subsidize farmers to grow bioenergy crops. However, current ways of subsidizing farmers in the EU are not optimal. Conventional crops receive large amounts of funds, while upcoming technologies such as biofuel production receive relatively little…

We all want to make the world a better place. Hence governments aim to help consumers to buy cars with lower CO2 emissions. One way of doing this is by reducing taxes on cars. Ideally, such a tax is directly linked to the actual CO2 emissions of the car because then the polluter pays for…

Modern cities enjoy many benefits connected to dense population and proximity of firms, but also face negative effects of agglomeration. In an urban context, external effects of traffic like noise and air pollution, or traffic congestion are some of the most significant issues for policy makers. Inefficiencies arising from congested roads have sparked economic research…

In many countries, vast amounts of public money are invested to preserve historic buildings. In the Netherlands, for example, total public expenditures on renovation subsidies have been more than a billion euros since the 1970s.

The production of natural gas has grown rapidly in recent years. For example, in the United States the total shale gas production has increased with almost 900 percent in the last six years.