Articles

Economics: the view from below

Authors: Marion Fourcade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Partisan Campaigning and Initiative Petition Signing in Direct Democracies

This paper investigates whether popular initiatives signed by a larger share of the population have higher acceptance rates at the subsequent vote. The main analysis is based on all Swiss federal initiatives v...

Authors: Katharina E. Hofer

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

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

How do Overnight Stays React to Exchange Rate Changes?

This paper analyses the effect of a change in the real exchange rate on the number of overnight stays in Swiss hotels. It uses unique three-dimensional panel data on the monthly number of overnight stays by th...

Authors: Christian Stettler

Tax Reform in an Era of Budget Stress, Inequality, and International Mobility

Authors: Alan J. Auerbach

Emerging Lessons from Half a Century of Fiscal Federalism in Switzerland

Over the last six years, researchers collaborating through the SNF Sinergia Project have collected data on fiscal federalism in Switzerland over more than half a century. The analysis of these new data in a ra...

Authors: Kurt Schmidheiny

Time-Varying and Regional Dynamics in Swiss Housing Markets

In light of the strong increase of house prices in Switzerland in the 2000s and early 2010s, we analyze the effects of mortgage rate shocks, changes in housing demand & supply and business cycle conditions on ...

Authors: Dirk Drechsel and Anne Kathrin Funk

Immigration and Swiss House Prices

This study examines the behavior of Swiss house prices in relation to immigration flows for 85 regions from 2001 to 2006. The results show that the nexus between immigration and house prices holds even in an e...

Authors: Kathrin Degen and Andreas M. Fischer

Econometric Analysis of Ratings — with an Application to Health and Wellbeing

We propose a new non-linear regression model for rating dependent variables. The rating scale model accounts for the upper and lower bounds of ratings. Parametric and semi-parametric estimation is discussed. A...

Authors: Raphael Studer and Rainer Winkelmann

Capital Markets Union in Europe: Why Other Unions Must Lead the Way

Government bond markets in the Euro Area are highly fragmented causing further fragmentation in bond and equity markets. Capital Markets Union with fully integrated capital markets across member countries can ...

Authors: Viral V. Acharya and Sascha Steffen

Macroprudential Policy and Credit Supply

In this paper we analyze financial crises and the interactions of macroprudential policy and credit. Financial crises are recurrent systemic phenomena, often triggering deep and long-lasting recessions with la...

Authors: José-Luis Peydró

Reallocation of Capital and Labor within Firms

Understanding how internal capital and labor markets function sheds light on one of the most fundamental questions in economics: what determines the boundaries of the firm? This essay reviews the theoretical a...

Authors: Holger Mueller

Obesity and Health-Care Costs in Switzerland: Dealing with Endogeneity in Non-Linear Regression Models

We draw microdata from the Swiss Household Panel to estimate the causal effect of obesity on the number of physician visits, the amount of hospital days, and the respective costs incurred. We do so by simultan...

Authors: Stefan Meyer

The Social Marginal Cost Curve and a Corner Solution of the Second-Best Level of Public Good Provision: A Review and an Extension

Assume that the private goods and the public good are weakly separable, the private goods are gross complements, and the private utility function is a homogeneous of degree one function with constant elasticit...

Authors: Ming Chung Chang, Hsiao-Ping Peng and Yan-Ching Ho

On the Regressivity of Gambling Taxes in Switzerland

In this study, the author assesses whether the gambling tax in Switzerland is regressive using a large, representative sample of the population and the reported gambling expenditures of the Swiss Health Survey...

Authors: Dimitri Kohler

Measuring the Invisible: An Overview of and Outlook for Tax Non-Compliance Estimates and Measurement Methods for Switzerland

This paper gives an overview of tax non-compliance estimates and evaluates the suitability of various tax non-compliance measurement methods for Switzerland. The existing estimates for Switzerland focus strong...

Authors: Felix Schmutz

Rational Pension Policies

Aim of this keynote is to develop a framework how to approach the design of pension policies as rationally as possible. The first step is to realize and accommodate endogenous adjustments. The second step is t...

Authors: Axel Börsch-Supan

Pension System Solvency — From Linguistics to Economics

Authors: Laurence J. Kotlikoff

A Simple Method for Predicting Distributions by Means of Covariates with Examples from Poverty and Health Economics

We present an integration based procedure for predicting the distribution f of an indicator of interest in situations where, in addition to the sample data, one has access to covariates that are available for the...

Authors: Jing Dai, Stefan Sperlich and Walter Zucchini

Relationship Banking in the Residential Mortgage Market? Evidence from Switzerland

We examine to what extent mortgage lending is characterized by strong relationships between banks and their borrowers. Our analysis is based on survey data covering all current bank relations for a sample of 1...

Authors: Martin Brown and Matthias Hoffmann

The Sources and Magnitudes of Switzerland’s Gains from Trade

This paper uses the modern workhorse model of quantitative trade theory (Eaton and Kortum, 2002) as a measurement tool to quantify Switzerland’s gains from trade. I find that individual trading partners matter su...

Authors: Christian Hepenstrick

Determinants of the Swiss Franc Real Exchange Rate

We conduct an empirical investigation of the determinants of the Swiss franc real exchange rate. Theory and related empirical papers suggest various specific factors as potential determinants We select some of...

Authors: Tommaso Mancini Griffoli, Christoph Meyer, Jean-Marc Natal and Attilio Zanetti

The Characteristics of FDI Activities Located in Different Host Regions — A Study Based on Firm-Level Data

Based on a unique firm-level dataset for Swiss MNEs, this paper characterizes FDI activities located in different host regions. The characterization of the FDI activities is based on information on the parent ...

Authors: Spyros Arvanitis, Heinz Hollenstein and Tobias Stucki

A Cautionary Note on the Put-Call Parity under an Asset Pricing Model with a Lower Reflecting Barrier

The put-call parity is free from distributional assumptions. It is tempting to assume that this parity also holds when an asset pricing model includes reflecting barriers. This paper shows that in the case of ...

Authors: Markus Hertrich

How do Individual Sectors Respond to Macroeconomic Shocks? A Structural Dynamic Factor Approach Applied to Swiss Data

This paper quantifies the impact of monetary policy, exchange rates and external demand on the production sectors of the Swiss economy. As the model covers the full set of production sectors it is possible thr...

Authors: Gregor Bäurle and Elizabeth Steiner

Linking Europe: The Role of the Swiss Electricity Transmission Grid until 2050

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role of the Swiss electricity transmission system and the planned network extensions in the context of Central European electricity market developments and thereby the ...

Authors: Ingmar Schlecht and Hannes Weigt

The Exposure of Mortgage Borrowers to Interest Rate Risk and House Price Risk — Evidence from Swiss Loan Application Data

We study the exposure of mortgage borrowers in Switzerland to interest rate and house price risks and examine how the households' choice of risky mortgages is related to individual interest rate expectations a...

Authors: Martin Brown and Benjamin Guin

Capital Flow Waves to and from Switzerland before and after the Financial Crisis

This paper first shows that capital inflows to and outflows from financial centers were disproportionately affected by the global financial crisis. Switzerland was no exception. The paper then identifies waves...

Authors: Pinar Yeşin

Effects of a Higher Replacement Rate on Unemployment Durations, Employment, and Earnings

This paper discusses the effects of a higher unemployment benefit replacement rate on unemployment durations, employment, and earnings. A reform of the Swiss unemployment insurance in July 2003 increased the r...

Authors: Beatrix Eugster

Who benefits most from university education in Switzerland?

Recent literature on private returns to education considers diversity in the population, heterogeneity in wage gains and self-selection into schooling. This research addresses these issues by analyzing to what...

Authors: Lionel Perini

What news drive variation in Swiss and US bond and stock excess returns?

Based on a vector autoregressive model (VAR), this paper shows that time variation in monthly excess returns on Swiss government bonds and stocks is predominantly driven by news of inflation and dividends, res...

Authors: Thomas Nitschka

Inflation expectations, central bank credibility and the global financial crisis

Long-run inflation expectations should not respond to economic news if the central bank is seen as credibly committed to stabilising inflation. In this paper we find that since the onset of the global financia...

Authors: Petra Gerlach-Kristen and Richhild Moessner

Can green power save us from climate change?

International efforts to lower emissions have largely failed, and many now believe we will fail to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. In this extended abstract, I discuss whether a wholesale...

Authors: M. Scott Taylor

Environmental tax reforms in Switzerland a computable general Equilibrium impact analysis

The Swiss energy strategy until 2050 envisages ambitious CO₂ emission reduction targets along with substantial cutbacks in electricity consumption to establish a low-carbon economy without nuclear energy. Our com...

Authors: Christoph Böhringer and André Müller

Assessing the Impacts of Non-Ricardian Households in an Estimated New Keynesian DSGE Model

A New Keynesian DSGE model with non-Ricardian households is estimated for the Portuguese economy and the stability of the model’s prediction (posterior distributions, impulse responses, and sources of fluctuat...

Authors: Ricardo Marto

A Real-Time Data Set for Switzerland

Accessibility of real-time data is crucial for applied macroeconomic researchers who aim at evaluating forecasts, policy decisions or the accuracy of initial data estimates. To the extent of our knowledge, no ...

Authors: Ronald Indergand and Stefan Leist

Valuing Public Investments to Support Bicycling

We develop a framework for assessing the net benefits of investments to promote bicycling, which explicitly accounts for internal costs of bicycling. We apply our model to eight Swiss cities using data from th...

Authors: Thomas Götschi and Beat Hintermann

Natural Hedging of Exchange Rate Risk: The Role of Imported Input Prices

In this paper, we estimate ERPT into imported input prices and export prices using disaggregated quarterly trade data for Switzerland over 2004–2011. We find evidence for high pass-through rates into imported ...

Authors: Dario Fauceglia, Anirudh Shingal and Martin Wermelinger

From Lifetime Jobs to Churning?

Using data over 1991–2008 for Switzerland, we investigate job stability through a series of Cox proportional hazards models. Our baseline results show that employment has become less stable for older male work...

Authors: Sylvain Weber and Giovanni Ferro Luzzi

Obtaining and Predicting the Bounds of Realized Correlations

This paper argues that the inherent data problems make precise point identification of realized correlation difficult but identification bounds in the spirit of Manski (1995) can be derived. These identification ...

Authors: Lidan Grossmass

Stock Market’s Reactions to Revelation of Tax Evasion: An Empirical Assessment

Additionally to the financial crisis causing a world recession, Liechtenstein’s financial sector has been challenged by the so-called “Zumwinkel-Affair”, when a whistle-blower sold data of hundreds of tax evad...

Authors: Andreas Brunhart

The determinants of long-run economic growth: A conceptually and computationally simple approach

In this paper we use principal components augmented regressions (PCARs), partly in conjunction with model averaging, to determine the variables relevant for economic growth. The use of PCARs allows to effectiv...

Authors: Jaroslava Hlouskova and Martin Wagner