We discuss the ongoing liberalization process in the market for addressed letter mail in Switzerland. The paper assesses the impact of the liberalization on the financial viability of various universal service obligations with and without access to the incumbent's downstream delivery network for...

Many studies on insider trading are based on data of the U.S. market and conclude that insiders can earn abnormal profits. This paper examines for the Swiss stock market whether insiders can earn abnormal profits and whether outsiders can make abnormal profits by mimicking the transactions of...

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 activity rate. Estimation results are then used to stylize several different Swiss investor...

This paper analyses the Determinants of Venture Capital Staging and Syndication in Switzerland. I find that among the different affiliations of VC investors in Switzerland especially independent investors make more extensive use of staged capital infusions. Moreover, the results suggest that...

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...

We investigate the gender wage differentials for Switzerland. Using the Swiss Labour Force Survey, we apply a matching method. Compared to the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, this nonparametric technique does not require any estimation of wage equations and accounts for differences that can be due...

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...

Der multisektorale Sammelindikator für die Schweizer Gesamtkonjunktur weist gegenüber eine Reihe von methodischen Innovationen auf und berücksichtigt eine vergleichsweise grosse Anzahl von Indikatorreihen. Für den Stützbereich von 1991 bis 2002 erhalten wir auf Quartalsbasis einen stabilen...

Die Arbeit untersucht den Ankündigungseffekt und die Outperformance von Schweizer Unternehmen, die zwischen 1992 und 2003 eine Nennwertrückzahlung ausgeschüttet haben und stellt die erste empirische Untersuchung von Nennwertrückzahlungen dar. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die...