Daniel Jonas Schmidt

I am a research economist at De Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank. My main research interests are macroeconomics, financial economics, and housing markets. I have gained extensive experience in working with heterogeneous agent models and micro data.

Between March 2024 and August 2025, I worked at the European Central Bank as a PhD trainee and Financial Stability Analyst in the the DG Macroprudential Policy and Financial Stability.

Moreover, I am completing my PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam and the Tinbergen Institute under the supervision of Marcelo Pedroni and Roel Beetsma.

The views expressed on this website are mine and do not necessarily reflect the positions of DNB, ECB, or the Eurosystem.

You can find my CV here.

Email: d.j.schmidt[at]dnb.nl

Working papers

The Effect of Flexible Retirement on the Marginal Propensity to Consume: Theory and Evidence.

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This paper studies the effect of flexible retirement on the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of a windfall gain. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Expectations, I find that the MPC of workers is approximately 20% lower than the MPC of retirees, even when controlling for age and other individual characteristics. In a simple theoretical model, I show that endogenous retirement can explain this difference: older workers use part of a windfall to finance early retirement, which decreases their consumption response relative to retirees. I quantify this mechanism in a life-cycle model with a realistic social security system, and find that flexible retirement accounts for most of the observed MPC difference. The retirement channel significantly dampens the response of aggregate consumption to shocks that disproportionately affect older individuals, such as stock market fluctuations. Moreover, endogenous retirement breaks the link between consumption responses and welfare, so that MPCs are no longer sufficient statistics for policy evaluation.

Presented at the KVS New Paper Sessions (2023, The Hague), Netspar International Pension Workshop (2023, Leiden), Munich Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (2024), RGS Doctoral Conference (2024, Essen), Theories and Methods in Macro Conference (2024, Amsterdam), Meeting of the Society of Economics of the Household (2024, Singapore), Baltic Economic Conference (2024, Tallinn), XAmsterdam Macroeconomic Workshop (2025).

Property Transfer Taxes, Residential Mobility and Welfare.

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This paper analyzes the effects of property transfer taxes on homeownership, residential mobility, and welfare. Using an overlapping generations model calibrated to the Netherlands, I find that an abolition of the 2% transfer tax increases the likelihood that homeowners sell their old house and buy a new one by about 40%. It also leads to a rise of the homeownership rate by 1-5 percentage points (depending on how revenue neutrality is achieved). Newborns prefer to live in an economy without property transfer taxes if the forgone tax revenues are replaced with higher annual property taxes, but not if revenue neutrality is achieved with higher income taxes. I also consider a partial reform that only exempts young first-time homebuyers from the transfer tax and is financed with higher annual property taxes. The resulting welfare gains are more than one half of the welfare gains from the complete reform.

Presented at the European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association (2022, London), Echoppe Conference on the Economics of Housing and Housing Policies (2022, Toulouse), Verein für Socialpolitik Jahrestagung (2022, Basel), Nederlandse Economendag (2022, The Hague), University of Konstanz (2024), De Nederlandsche Bank (2025).

Work in progress

Why Is Flood Insurance Take-Up Low? Insights from a Dynamic Model.

Removing Fiscal Subsidies for Homeowners in the Netherlands. (Joint work with Cindy Biesenbeek.)

Optimal Flood Policy. (Joint work with Taco Prins and Lennard Schlattmann)

Policy publications

Bouveret, A., Darpeix, P.-E., Ferrari, M., Grill, M., Molestina Vivar, L., Okseniuk, D., Raillon, F., Schäfer, A., Schmidt, D. J. & Weistroffer, C. (2025) Containing risks from leverage in alternative investment funds. ESRB Occasional Paper. European Systemic Risk Board.

Bouveret, A., Ferrari, M., Grill, M., Molestina Vivar, L., Schmidt, D. J., & Weistroffer, C. (2025). Leveraged investment funds: A framework for assessing risks and designing policies. Macroprudential Bulletin, Issue 26. European Central Bank.

Banu, E., Evrard, J., Schmidt, D. J., & Wedow, M. (2025). Crossing two hurdles in one leap: how an EU savings product could boost returns and capital markets. The ECB Blog. European Central Bank.

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