Articles

The Balassa-Samuelson effect reversed: new evidence from OECD countries

This paper reconsiders the Balassa-Samuelson (BS) hypothesis. We analyze an OECD country panel from 1970 to 2008 and compare three data sets on sectoral productivity, including newly constructed data on total ...

Authors: Matthias Gubler and Christoph Sax

Culture, money attitudes and economic outcomes

Using novel survey data, we examine attitudes towards money and to what extent they affect economic outcomes in Switzerland. We find that three main types of attitudes towards money co-exist: the prestige and ...

Authors: Caroline Henchoz, Tristan Coste and Boris Wernli

Financial literacy and the need for financial education: evidence and implications

Authors: Annamaria Lusardi

The U.S. Tax Program for Swiss banks: what determined the penalties?

The U.S. Tax Program for Swiss banks is a very significant part of the recent history of the Swiss financial industry. It has accelerated the transformation of the Swiss banking industry from a system that rel...

Authors: Yvan Lengwiler and Albana Saljihaj

Unbiased weighted variance and skewness estimators for overlapping returns

This article develops unbiased weighted variance and skewness estimators for overlapping return distributions. These estimators extend the variance estimation methods constructed in Bod et. al. (Applied Financ...

Authors: Stephen Taylor and Ming Fang

Term structure dynamics at low and negative interest rates—evidence from Switzerland

This paper studies the transmission of changes in short-term interest rates to longer-term government bond yields when interest rates are at very low levels or negative. We focus on Switzerland, where short-te...

Authors: Christian Grisse and Silvio Schumacher

Openness and productivity of the Swiss economy

This paper analyzes the connection between openness and economic performance in Switzerland. Considering different dimensions of openness, we show that the Swiss economy is classified as relatively open. Never...

Authors: Reto Föllmi, Angela Fuest, Philipp an de Meulen, Martin Micheli, Torsten Schmidt and Lina Zwick

Optimal equity capital requirements for large Swiss banks

Ten years after the worst financial crisis of the post-war period, Switzerland has established a Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) framework. Under this framework, the two large Swiss banks are subject to substantial cap...

Authors: Georg Junge and Peter Kugler

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

Economics: the view from below

Authors: Marion Fourcade

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

Authors: Monika Bütler

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

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

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

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

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