Articles

Semiparametric base-independent equivalence scales and the cost of children in Switzerland

How much additional income does a couple with two children need to be equally well-off as a childless couple? This question is important for public policy decisions on social benefits or child allowances. Sinc...

Authors: Aline Bütikofer

The evolution of top incomes in Switzerland over the 20^th century

We study the income concentration in the Swiss federation over the course of the 20^th century using federal income tax statistics. The results suggest that top incomes in Switzerland evolved over time rather rema...

Authors: Christoph A. Schaltegger and Christoph Gorgas

Taxing expats — instrumental versus expressive voting compared

Authors: Charles B. Blankart and Simon Margraf

The cycle of development in Africa: A story about the power of economic ideas

During the last 60 years development in Sub-Sahara Africa has had three main phases — P1, P2 and P3 — divided by kinks in 1972 and in 1994. P1 and P3 had fairly satisfactory growth, but P2 had negative growth....

Authors: Martin Paldam

Copyright for the digital age — A call for legislative reversibility

Policymakers tend to adopt too narrow a view of the creative industries when determining the desirability of copyright protection. In these industries, authors will often create new works despite weak protecti...

Authors: Felix Oberholzer-Gee

Subjective well-being, politics and political economy

Authors: Bruno S. Frey

Zusammenwirken von Politik und Wirtschaft

Authors: Kaspar Villiger

Political Economy

Authors: Gebhard Kirchgässner

The real-time predictive content of the KOF Economic Barometer

We investigate whether the KOF Economic Barometer – a leading indicator released by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute – is useful for short-term prediction of quarterly year-on-year real GDP growth in Switzerla...

Authors: Boriss Siliverstovs

Financial market integration in late medieval Europe: Results from a threshold error correction model for the Rhinegulden and Basle Pound 1365–1429

This paper analyzes the integration of the foreign exchange market for the Basle Pound and the Rhinegulden and the market for gold and silver bullion for the period 1365–1429. The application of a threshold er...

Authors: Peter Kugler

International price differences in ski lift tickets

This paper provides empirical evidence on international price differences in ski lift tickets based on 214 ski areas in Austria, France, and Switzerland for the winter season 2010/2011. We find that French and...

Authors: Martin Falk

Did the CDS market push up risk premia for sovereign credit?

We examine the empirical relationship between credit default swap (CDS) premia and government bond spreads for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (the ‘PIIGS’ countries). We find some evidence for a l...

Authors: Sergio Andenmatten and Felix Brill

An analysis of technical efficiency and efficiency factors for Austrian and Swiss non-profit theatres

This article explores the measurement of the production technology and efficiency of the performing arts sector. The stochastic frontier analysis has been used to estimate the technical efficiency scores for 2...

Authors: Marta Zieba

Aging and the financing of social security in Switzerland

The gains in life expectancy are expected to double the dependency ratio and increase population by 10% in Switzerland until 2050. To quantify the effects on social security and public finances, we use an over...

Authors: Christian Keuschnigg, Mirela Keuschnigg and Christian Jaag

The effect of parental background on track choices and wages

Intergenerational links are often investigated by computing educational attainment correlations between parents and children, even though parental background may influence outcomes at earlier stages of the edu...

Authors: Jean-Marc Falter, Giovanni Ferro Luzzi and Federica Sbergami

Redistribution in Switzerland: Social cohesion or simple smoothing of lifetime incomes?

Using the example of Switzerland, this paper examines the extent to which the state and the social security institutions change the income distribution. Two sets of questions are examined: (1) Who benefits fro...

Authors: Monika Engler

Improving Prevention Compliance through Appropriate Incentives: Theoretical Modelling and Empirical Evidence

This paper explores the effects of insurance parameters and complementary information environment on the patient’s primary prevention activity. The theoretical model is based on a principal-agent setting in wh...

Authors: Udo Schneider and Jürgen Zerth

Variety Gains from Trade in Switzerland

Since the seminal work of Krugman (1979), variety gains from trade are recognized as an important channel of welfare gains. In this paper, the gains from variety are estimated for Switzerland. It is found that de...

Authors: Lukas Mohler

The Similar Faces of Swiss Working Poor

Authors: Fabio B. Losa and Emiliano Soldini

Should Marginal Cost of Public Funds Include the Revenue Effect?

It is an important difference in different measures of the marginal cost of public funds whether to take into account the “revenue effect” emphasized by Atkinson and Stern (1974). This paper tries to reconcile tw...

Authors: Ming Chung Chang and Shufen Wu

Free migration between the EU and Switzerland: Impacts on the Swiss economy and implications for monetary policy

Authors: Peter Stalder

Skilled migration and economic performances: Evidence from OECD countries

This paper investigates the effects of immigration flows and their human capital content on per capita GDP variation in 24 OECD host countries. Theoretical models concludes that the effect of immigrants in hos...

Authors: Gianluca Orefice

Remitters in Dubai

This article provides a short description of remitters in Dubai. The data comes from a remittance survey on foreign workers in the Emirate conducted in 2008. Among other findings, our results suggest that ther...

Authors: George Naufal and Carlos Vargas-Silva

Who opposes immigrants’ integration into the labor market? The Swiss case

First, we spell out a political-economy model, based on segmented labor markets, which explains why a guest-worker system is preferred to a non-discriminatory immigration regime and why measures to improve the...

Authors: Tobias Müller and Silvio H. T. Tai

The effects of immigration on wages: An application of the structural skill-cell approach

This paper investigates how recent immigration inflows from 2002 to 2008 have affected wages in Switzerland. This period is of particular interest as it marks the time during which the bilateral agreement with...

Authors: Michael Gerfin and Boris Kaiser

Migration and trade union rights

We study in this paper both theoretically and empirically the influence of trade union rights in origin countries on bilateral migration flows. Theoretically, trade union rights are supposed to increase the ba...

Authors: Thierry Baudassé and Rémi Bazillier

Looking at the integration of nations through the lens of the merger of populations: Preliminary superadditivity and impossibility results

This paper looks at the integration of regions and nations through the prism of the merger of populations. The paper employs a particular index of social dismay. It presents examples of two of the main results...

Authors: Oded Stark

Diaspora effects in international migration: Key questions and methodological issues

This paper reviews the existing literature on the impact of migrants networks on the patterns of international migration. It covers the theoretical channels at stake in the global effect of the networks. It id...

Authors: Michel Beine, Frédéric Docquier and Cağlar Özden

International immigration: Theory, evidence and policy

Authors: Jean-Daniel Gerber

Estimating a stock-flow model for the Swiss housing market

This paper analyzes the development of housing market imbalances, housing prices and residential investment in Switzerland within a stock-flow framework. In the long run, the desired level of residential capit...

Authors: Elizabeth Steiner

Productivity and economic growth in Switzerland 1991–2006

In this paper, we analyse the sources of economic growth in Switzerland during the period 1991–2006. The results suggest that labour input and capital input contribute 0.52 pp and 0.57 pp, respectively, to the...

Authors: Barbara Rudolf and Mathias Zurlinden

Tactical size rotation in Switzerland

The size premium, defined as the return differential between shares of small and large companies, is subject to cyclical fluctuations. This study examines the predictability of this premium for the Swiss stock...

Authors: Thorsten Hock

‘Baumol’s diseases’: The case of Switzerland

Nordhaus (2008) has developed a testing strategy for what he calls ‘Baumol’s diseases’, by which name he designates a number of by-products of structural change that are unwanted from an economic policy perspecti...

Authors: Jochen Hartwig

Interchange fees as a mechanism to raise rivals’ costs — some evidence from Switzerland

In 2004 the Swiss Competition Commission (ComCo) opened an investigation concerning multilateral agreed interchange fees in the Swiss credit card market which ended with an amicable settlement. The most import...

Authors: Samuel Rutz

Test of fiscal sustainability and causality hypotheses for Switzerland

This paper examines the causality between the Swiss federal governments revenue and expenditure over the 1900 to 2002 period by estimating the short- and long-run relation within an error-correction approach t...

Authors: Silika Prohl

International policy coordination and simple monetary policy rules

This paper studies monetary policy in an optimizing two-country model. We suppose a two-step production process that is associated with vertical trade. Prices of final consumption goods are sticky and pass-thr...

Authors: Wolfram Berger

Poverty in Tunisia: A Fuzzy measurement approach

Although poverty is widely recognised as a multidimensional phenomenon, we still believe that monetary aspect has a fundamental role and therefore deserves a special treatment. For this reason we propose an in...

Authors: Besma Belhadj and Mohamed Salah Matoussi

Perspectives on monetary policy in Switzerland

Authors: Charles Wyplosz

The SNB’s new monetary policy framework ten years on: Panel discussion

Authors: Edward Nelson

Reaction of Swiss term premia to monetary policy surprises

An affine yield curve model is estimated on daily Swiss data 2002–2009. The market price of risk is modelled in terms of proxies for uncertainty, which are estimated from interest rate options. The estimated m...

Authors: Paul Söderlind

Discussion of “The Swiss Franc Exchange Rate and Deviations from UIP: Global versus Domestic Factors” by Mathias Hoffmann and Rahel Suter

Authors: Kevin Ross

Discussion of “Interest Rate Dynamics and Monetary Policy Implementation in Switzerland” by Puriya Abbassi, Dieter Nautz and Christian J. Offermanns

Authors: Dewet Moser

Discussion of “Measuring the Natural Output Level by DSGE Models: An Empirical Investigation for Switzerland” by Stefan Leist and Klaus Neusser

Authors: Yvan Lengwiler

Discussion of “The Role of Monetary Aggregates in the Policy Analysis of the Swiss National Bank” by Gebhard Kirchgässner and Jürgen Wolters

Authors: Samuel Reynard

Discussion of “Unemployment and Monetary Policy in Switzerland” by Peter Kugler and George Sheldon

Authors: Marc P. Giannoni

Discussion of “Indeterminacy, Causality, and the Foundations of Monetary Policy Analysis” by Bennett T. McCallum

Authors: Katrin Assenmacher

Discussion of “Indeterminacy, Causality, and the Foundations of Monetary Policy Analysis” by Bennett McCallum

Authors: Cédric Tille

Indeterminacy, causality, and the foundations of monetary policy analysis

To be useful as a guide to behavior, a model that includes a relationship between x _t and z_t+1 must specify whether x _t is influenced by the e...

Authors: Bennett T. McCallum

Discussion of “Ten Years Experience with the Swiss National Bank Monetary Policy Strategy” by T. Jordan, M. Peytringnet and E. Rossi

Authors: Georg Rich

Discussion of “Ten Years Experience with the Swiss National Bank Monetary Policy Strategy” by T. Jordan, M. Peytringnet and E. Rossi

Authors: Marvin Goodfriend