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 groups of firms working either with clean or polluting technology. Since green investors...

Monetary aggregates have historically played an important role in Swiss monetary policy, with the Swiss National Bank using money growth targets until 1999. Since 2000, when a new policy framework was introduced that focuses on an inflation forecast, money growth has been used as an indicator...

After the switch to a floating exchange rate in 1973, the Swiss National Bank at first adopted annual monetary targets and in the 1990s shifted to a medium-term targeting strategy. In this paper I review the SNB’s internal policy analysis, an aspect of Swiss monetary targeting that has...

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 groups of firms working either with clean or polluting technology. Since green investors...

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 workers with job vacancies performed by employment offices are all important active labour...

This paper evaluates the reduction of credit risk that can be achieved in Switzerland by a national diversification of bank lending. Using a credit risk model based on corporate default rates, I find that the risk of a nationally diversified loan portfolio is up to 20% smaller than the sum of...

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 order to identify causality effects and assess the relevance of wages as an indicator for short-run price changes. We find...

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 constitute a major part of the banking system. Notwithstanding some limitations (biases due...

We analyze the completed highest education degree of two birth cohorts (1934-1943 and 1964-1973) in Switzerland, using data from the 1999 Swiss Household Panel. The fraction of tertiary graduates has increased over time, for women more so than for men. Educational attainment depends strongly on...

In this analysis, the informational content of central bank rhetoric is assessed based on the experience with the ECB since 1999. We construct a wording indicator reflecting the "hawkishness" of monetary rhetorics. For the construction, we develop an objective algorithm representing a learning...