This paper examines the impact of participants' age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do indeed take the average age of their participants into account. However, the average age of active participants has been incorporated much more strongly in investment behaviour than the average ages of retired or dormant participants. This suggests that both employers and employees, who dominate pension fund boards, tend to show more interest in active participants. A one-year higher average age in active participants leads to a significant and robust reduction in the strategic equity exposure by around 0.5 percentage point. Larger pension funds show a stronger age-equity exposure effect than smaller pension funds. This age-dependent asset allocation of pension funds aligns with the original life-cycle model by which young workers should invest more in equity than older workers because of their larger human capital. Other factors, viz. fund size, funding ratio, and average pension wealth of participants, influence equity exposure positively and significantly, in line with theory. Pension plan type and pension fund type have no significant impact.

a b s t r a c tThis paper studies the empirical relationship between the real economy, consumer confidence and economic news coverage in national newspapers for the Netherlands during the period 1990-2009. Media-attention for economic developments is associated with consumer confidence, with more negative news decreasing consumer confidence; this result holds after controlling for the real economy (stock-market). The relationship differs for different business-cycles. The effect is in particular stronger for the months following the beginning of the credit-crisis. This suggests that in line with many popular concerns negative news is among factors influencing the hardness of the landing of the current creditcrisis.

This paper studies the empirical relationship between the real economy, consumer confidence and economic news coverage in national newspapers for the Netherlands during the period 1990-2008. Media-attention for economic developments Granger-causes consumer confidence, with more negative news decreasing consumer confidence; this result holds when controlling for the real economy (stock-market). This suggests that in line with many popular concerns negative news is among factors influencing the hardness of the landing of the current credit-crisis, whereas positive news might have been a contributing factor in the build-up of asset-and housing bubbles.

In this article, we discuss the use of time series models in communication research. More specifically, we consider autoregressive and moving-average processes, which together constitute the autoregressive integrated moving average-framework (ARIMA). This approach provides a comprehensive framework to deal with the essential issue of stationarity and to model the dynamics of any time series by estimating the autocorrelation structure. Underlying the models are questions as to what extent news tends to reproduce itself and how news flows adjust after deviations from the normal news stream. The data illustrating the models consist of visibility-scores of the immigration issue in Dutch national newspapers. The empirical analysis demonstrates that the impact of immigration figures on this visibility is not significant when the ARIMA-framework is applied, while an analysis using OLS suggests a positive influence.

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When will a vote-seeking government pursue unpopular welfare reforms that are likely to cost it votes? Using a game-theoretical model, we show that a government enacts reforms that are unpopular with the median voter during bad economic times, but not during good ones. The key reason is that voters cannot commit to re-elect a government that does not reform during bad times. This voters' commitment problem stems from economic voting, i.e., voters' tendency to punish the government for a poorly performing economy. The voter commitment problem provides an explanation for the empirical puzzle that governments sometimes enact reforms that voters oppose. Keywords Commitment • Political economy • Reform • Welfare-programs JEL Classification D72 • D78 • H11 • H5 • I38 • J48 1 Introduction Public opinion research shows that the cards are very much stacked in favor of the welfare state status quo. A majority of voters, including the median voter holding the median policy preference, value core welfare programs such as public pensions and unemployment benefits and prefer to uphold the status quo rather than cutting back these programs (

When will a vote-seeking government pursue unpopular welfare reforms that are likely to cost it votes? Using a game-theoretical model, we show that a government enacts reforms that are unpopular with the median voter during bad economic times, but not during good ones. The key reason is that voters cannot commit to re-elect a government that does not reform during bad times. This voters' commitment problem stems from economic voting, i.e., voters' tendency to punish the government for a poorly performing economy. The voter commitment problem provides an explanation for the empirical puzzle that governments sometimes enact reforms that voters oppose.

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