The purpose of this study is to provide some information how different political institutions influence the development of social security policies. In representative democracies governments quite often use an expansion of the social security policies for their own selfish purposes. Voters are...

An important aspect of a central bank's operating procedure is its signalling strategy. Whereas in the US announcements of the federal-funds-rate target are the key policy signal, the signalling strategy of the Bundesbank and the ESCB rely on announcements of several official rates. Following...

This paper empirically analyses two important events in the history of the Swiss pay-asyou- go pension system (AHV/AVS): First, its introduction in 1947, and second, the substantial structural reforms of the 10th revision in 1995. Approving vote shares are estimated with a grouped logit model....

The Swiss heroin policy is compared to a theoretically derived rational drug policy. It is argued that, although being one of the most liberal policies worldwide, the Swiss policy still is too repressive. A further legalization of heroin would most probably be welfare enhancing.