Articles

Debt, economic growth, and interest rates: an empirical study of the Swiss case, presenting a new long-term dataset: 1894–2014

In this paper, relations between public debt, economic growth, and long-term interest rates in Switzerland from 1894 to 2014 are examined. For this purpose, an original long-term dataset on the general gross p...

Authors: Guillaume Guex and Sébastien Guex

Childcare and maternal part-time employment: a natural experiment using Swiss cantons

Fuelled by federal stimuli of 440 million Swiss francs, the staggered expansion of childcare in many cantons allows the evaluation of this family policy on female labour supply. With new cantonal data, this st...

Authors: Laura Ravazzini

On the rewards to international investing: a safe haven currency perspective

The safe haven property of the Swiss franc presents a specific challenge for internationally minded Swiss-based investors. The central issue is whether the traditional under-performance of Swiss assets is made...

Authors: Jean-Pierre Danthine and Samuel Danthine

International trade and unemployment: towards an investigation of the Swiss case

The topic of this paper has been motivated by the rising unemployment rate of low-skilled relative to high-skilled labour in Switzerland. Between 1991 and 2014, Switzerland experienced the highest relative inc...

Authors: Lukas Mohler, Rolf Weder and Simone Wyss

Comparative politics and the synthetic control method revisited: a note on Abadie et al. (2015)

Recently, Abadie et al. (Am J Polit Sci 59:495–510, 2015) have expanded synthetic control methods by the so-called cross-validation technique. We find that their results are not being reproduced when alternati...

Authors: Stefan Klößner, Ashok Kaul, Gregor Pfeifer and Manuel Schieler

Interest-parity conditions during the era of the classical gold standard (1880–1914)—evidence from the investment demand for bills of exchange in Europe

This paper examines interest-parity conditions that arguably held as regards the investment demand for bills of exchange during the classical gold standard (1880–1914). Contemporaneous guides to the foreign ex...

Authors: Nils Herger

The Swiss franc safety premium

This paper applies a recent method proposed by Maggiori (The U.S. Dollar Safety Premium, 2013) to estimate the Swiss franc safety premium. The results show that the three-step instrumental variable approach as us...

Authors: Jessica Leutert

The economics of secession: a review of legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects

The aim of this paper is to present a review of the legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects of secessions from an economic perspective. This survey provides interesting insights into recent events such as th...

Authors: Thierry Madiès, Grégoire Rota-Grasiozi, Jean-Pierre Tranchant and Cyril Trépier

Money demand under free banking: Switzerland 1851–1906

This paper studies money demand in Switzerland under free banking before the establishment of the Swiss National Bank. We find that, in addition to income, the banks’ balance-sheet-to-GDP ratio and the number ...

Authors: Stefan Gerlach and Peter Kugler

Inheritance flows in Switzerland, 1911–2011

We estimate the size of inheritance flows in Switzerland over a long span of data, in close analogy to the study for France by Piketty (Q J Econ 126(3):1071–1131, 2011). We find that inheritance flows had been...

Authors: Marius Brülhart, Didier Dupertuis and Elodie Moreau

Factor substitution in Swiss manufacturing: empirical evidence using micro panel data

This paper analyzes the relationship between factor substitutability and the energy intensity of manufacturing firms. Specifically, we compare the degree of substitutability between the input factors capital, ...

Authors: Sebastian M. Deininger, Lukas Mohler and Daniel Mueller

How does depreciations management affect subsequent fiscal performance? The case of the Swiss cantons

Creative accounting allows governments and, more particularly, finance ministers to somehow manage financial reports to achieve specific and possibly self-interested goals. It is usually used to hide deficits....

Authors: Maxime Clémenceau and Nils Soguel

Methods to identify linear network models: a review

In many contexts we may be interested in understanding whether direct connections between agents, such as declared friendships in a classroom or family links in a rural village, affect their outcomes. In this ...

Authors: Arun Advani and Bansi Malde

The sovereign money initiative in Switzerland: an economic assessment

The sovereign money initiative will be submitted to the Swiss people in 2018. This paper reviews the arguments behind the initiative and discusses its potential impact. I argue that several arguments are incon...

Authors: Philippe Bacchetta

Economics: the view from below

Authors: Marion Fourcade

On economists as policy advisors with applications to Switzerland

This paper analyses the role of economists in advising political agents. Based on the experience in the recent financial crisis, it starts with the important role of expectations management. Economists should ...

Authors: Aymo Brunetti

Economists: moral realists or real moralists? Comment on Fourcade and Brunetti

Authors: Monika Bütler

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Authors: Martin Brown, Volker Grossmann, Rafael Lalive and Cédric Tille

Capital Flows and the Swiss Franc

The Swiss franc is known to appreciate strongly during financial market turmoil, demonstrating its status as a typical safe haven currency. One possible mechanism behind this appreciation during times of globa...

Authors: Pınar Yeşin

Impacts of Global Warming on Energy Use for Heating and Cooling with Full Rebound Effects in Switzerland

This paper analyzes the impacts of the modified needs for space heating and cooling due to global warming on the quantities of energy used for space conditioning and overall. It thereby estimates direct and to...

Authors: Camille Gonseth, Philippe Thalmann and Marc Vielle

How Reliable are Cointegration-Based Estimates for Wealth Effects on Consumption? Evidence from Switzerland

According to economie theory, the intertemporal budget constraint of households implies that a permanent increase in wealth should have a positive effect on consumer spending. Given the comparatively strong in...

Authors: Alain Galli

Allocation of Expenditures in Elderly Households and the Cost of Widowhood

Widowhood and retirement change the economie environment of elderly households. While retirement changes income and expenditure patterns, widowhood fundamentally changes the structure of the household. Besides...

Authors: Daniel Burkhard

The Relationship between Inequality and Growth: Evidence from New Data

The relationship between inequality and growth has attracted a lot of attention in the previous literature. Estimation of this relationship may be biased by simultaneity, omitted variables and measurement erro...

Authors: Costanza Naguib

Heterogeneity in Income Tax Capitalization: Evidence from the Swiss Housing Market

There is evidence that taxes capitalize into housing prices, but great uncertainty about the magnitude of income tax capitalization. One explanation why empirical evidence is unclear may stem from the fact tha...

Authors: Mario Morger

Is Governance Related to Investment Performance and Asset Allocation? Empirical Evidence from Swiss Pension Funds

This study investigates the relationship between governance, investment performance and asset allocation of pension funds in Switzerland. Our sample includes survey data from 139 Swiss occupational pension pla...

Authors: Manuel Ammann and Christian Ehmann