Using a large sample of auctions results of prestigious Bordeaux wines, we provide an analysis of the price formation of wine through auctions sales. Estimating an hedonic price function, we identify the most relevant characteristics influencing the price of Bordeaux wines during auctions sales....

The growing support to the view that political and institutional settings have a role to play ensuring fiscal performance has paradoxically been accompanied by an increasing lack of confidence about the results achieved. It could be possible that budgetary institutions are endogenous, and their...

In this paper, we investigate the optimal timing and location for deep geological disposal of nuclear waste. Our model is based on the real options approach to investment under uncertainty. In this context, the problem is similar to the optimal exercise policy for a perpetual American spread option.

Severe natural catastrophes in the early nineties have brought about a lack of financial capacity in the catastrophe line of the global reinsurance market. The finance industry reacted to this situation by issuing innovative products designed to spread the excess risk more widely among...

In this paper, we use the hedonic approach to estimate the value of a statistical life based on the 1995 Swiss Labour Force Survey (SLFS) and the 1994 Swiss Wage Structure Survey (SWSS). Roughly, the value of a statistical life in Switzerland ranges from CHF 10 to 15 million (6.5-9.5 million...

This paper adopts a normative approach to catastrophe insurance. It addresses the question of how innovations in the design of insurance contracts could help resolve the capacity gap in the provision of insurance against natural catastrophes. It extends previous research with the same approach...

This paper uses a three-factor (capital, low and high-skill labour), two-household (low and high-skill individuals), two-sector trade model to analyse the determinants of voter attitudes towards immigration under direct democracy and identify factors that would be coherent with both the observed...

Using the influence-driven approach to endogenous trade-policy determination, we show how a free-trade agreement (FTA) with rules of origin can work as a device to compensate losers from trade liberalization. The FTA constructed in this paper is characterized by external tariff structures that...

The aim of this research is to analyse the wage differentials between various groups of immigrants and the Swiss workers.

The paper reviews the evolution in insurance economics over the past 25 years, by first recalling the situation in 1973, then presenting the developments and new approaches which flourished since then. The paper argues that these developments were only possible because steady advances were made...