We analyze transactional payment data to study consumption expenditure patterns in Switzerland. The high-frequency nature of the data enables credible identification of expenditure changes both across and within weeks, which is essential for business decisions and economic policy analysis. We...

This paper quantifies the consequences of a better match between decision-making and cost-bearing responsibilities in the provision of compulsory schooling in Switzerland. Specifically, I investigate whether the elimination of cost-sharing based on effective local expenditures for teachers sets...

The costs and speed of the energy transition are closely linked to the elasticity of substitution between fossil fuels and clean energy sources. Yet, despite its central role, this parameter has been treated as exogenous and constant in numerical studies of climate policy. Drawing on recent...

This paper uses novel linked survey and administrative data for jobseekers in Switzerland to study jobseekers' skills, potential skill gaps, and their job search behaviour. Based on a realized sample of survey participants that is better educated and has better employment prospect than the...

This study extracts signals from more than 530,000 news articles from 15 large Swiss newspapers to measure economic sentiment in Switzerland. Economic sentiment includes consumer sentiment and business sentiment. The research period for the text sentiment analysis ranges from 2016 to 2022, so...

Cross-border shopping expands product variety and lowers prices for consumers in high-price countries, but it diminishes domestic tax revenues, reduces sales, and shifts demand away from local retailers. Exploiting Switzerland's COVID-19-induced border closure as a natural experiment, I...

Different consumption patterns have been linked to different levels of responsibility for current greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, and it is well established that the affluent are responsible for higher levels of global ghg emission than are the poor. Here I couple a life cycle assessment of...

The restaurant industry has a high failure rate and predicting restaurant bankruptcy is an important task to mitigate economic losses. Restaurant consumer review data contains rich information and influences future restaurant demand. We investigate the value of publicly available data for...

We study the effects of a reform to VAT rules (the reverse charge mechanism on domestic transactions) aimed at eliminating VAT fraud involving cross-border transactions within the European Union (EU). The EU VAT system is prone to fraud involving cross-border transactions between member states,...

Using granular customs data, we construct a counterfactual of the evolution of Swiss goods exports under the premise that the minimum exchange rate policy would have been continued. We study the adjustment dynamics of aggregate and sectoral goods exports due to the exchange rate shock in January...