Articles

To Wait or Not to Wait: Swiss EU-Membership as an Investment under Uncertainty

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? In order to address this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit and Pindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-mem...

Authors: Beat Spirig and Rolf Weder

The Effect of Entry Regulation on Process Innovation in the Swiss Mail Industry

We develop an industry specific model of price competition with product differentiation to analyze the effect of entry regulation on process innovation in the Swiss mail industry. We consider the four most pro...

Authors: Helmut M. Dietl, Andreas Grütter, Martin Lutzenberger, Cátia Felisberto and Matthias Finger

Insider Trading in the Swiss Stock Market

Authors: Andreas Zingg, Sebastian Lang and Daniela Wyttenbach

Swiss Monetary Targeting 1974–1996: The Role of Internal Policy Analysis

Authors: Georg Rich

Liberalization of the Swiss Letter Market and the Viability of Universal Service Obligations

Authors: Christian Jaag

Nothing Ventured — Nothing Gained? Empirical Evidence on Venture Capital Financing in Switzerland

Authors: Christian Hopp

Life Cycle Portfolio Choice: A Swiss Perspective

We use panel data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey to estimate age-earnings profiles as well as transitory and permanent income shock variances for investor groups distinguished by gender, education and activ...

Authors: Florian Zainhofer

Does it Pay to Watch Central Bankers’ Lips? The Information Content of ECB Wording

In this analysis, the informational content of central bank rhetoric is assessed based on the experience with the ECB since 1999. Among the ECB’s communication channels we focus on the monthly press conference...

Authors: Friedrich Heinemann and Katrin Ullrich

The Apple Falls Increasingly Far: Parent-Child Correlation in Schooling and the Growth of Post-Secondary Education in Switzerland

We analyze the completed highest education degree of four ten-year birth cohorts between 1934 and 1973 in Switzerland, using data from the Swiss Household Panel 1999–2004. As expected, the fraction of tertiary...

Authors: Alejandra Cattaneo, Sandra Hanslin and Rainer Winkelmann

Can Bank Supervisors Rely on Market Data? A Critical Assessment from a Swiss Perspective

Market data, such as bond spreads or equity price volatility, are a complementary source to bank supervisory information. In Switzerland, meaningful market data are available for a number of banks which consti...

Authors: Urs W. Birchler and Matteo Facchinetti

Do Wages Lead Inflation? Swiss Evidence

We construct a quarterly time series for nominal hourly wages and unit labour costs from 1975 onwards and investigate the empirical link between wages and CPI inflation in Switzerland in order to identify caus...

Authors: Attilio Zanetti

Could Regional and Cantonal Banks Reduce Credit Risk through National Diversification?

This paper estimates the reduction of credit risk that can be achieved in Switzerland through a national diversification of bank lending. Using a credit risk model based on corporate default rates, we find tha...

Authors: Bertrand Rime

An Efficiency Comparison of Regional Employment Offices Operating under Different Exogenous Conditions

This paper investigates the technical efficiency differences of a sample of regional employment offices (REOs) across Swiss cantons. Regular job-search assistance, registration and matching of unemployed worke...

Authors: José V. Ramirez and Anatoli Vassiliev

Principle Guided Investing: The Use of Exclusionary Screens and Its Implications for Green Investors

This paper examines how “green” investors can induce firms to invest in clean production technology. The 1-period model incorporates heterogeneous agents — Markowitz investors and green investors — and two gro...

Authors: Urs von Arx

Multifunctional Agriculture and the Preservation of Environmental Benefits

We investigate environmental aspects of agriculture from a welfare economic perspective and show that efficiency prices of agricultural and forest land include important amenity and non-use values that exhibit...

Authors: Werner Hediger and Bernard Lehmann

A Two-Pillar Phillips Curve for Switzerland

Monetary aggregates have historically been important in Swiss monetary policy. The Swiss National Bank used money growth targets until 1999. The new policy framework introduced in 2000 focuses on an inflation ...

Authors: Petra Gerlach-Kristen

Traffic Accidents in Switzerland: How Hazardous Are “High Risk” Groups? An Analysis Based on Police Protocols

On January 1, 2005, Switzerland reduced the legal level of blood-alcohol concentration while driving from 0.8‰ to 0.5‰. This happend on basis of the assumption that more restrictive per mil levels increase roa...

Authors: Thomas Gautschi, Dominik Hangartner and Aline Bütikofer

Decomposition of the Gender Wage Gap Using Matching: An Application for Switzerland

In this paper, we investigate the gender wage differentials for Switzerland. Using micro data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey, we apply a matching method to decompose the wage gap in Switzerland. This nonpa...

Authors: Dragana Djurdjevic and Sergiy Radyakin