The discussion about the long-run evolution of labor productivity in Switzerland is flawed because the available data on the input of labor is incoherent and incomplete. It is the aim of this paper to establish a consistent aggregate series of total hours worked covering 1950-2010. The new data...

In this study we investigate the impact of early stage venture capital on innovation activities of Swiss start-ups. This is done based on a cohort of start-ups that is representative of all firms founded in Switzerland in 1996/97 as recorded by a census of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office...

Using firm-level data for up to 707 Swiss hotels and restaurants we evaluate the economic impact of the EURO 2008 soccer championship. Although aggregated macro data reveal no economic impact, we report an overall negative effect based on the surveyed companies. Notably the reported effects of...

Forecasting real economic activity poses a considerable challenge not only due to hard-to-predict events like the current financial crisis but also due to the fact that targeted variables often undergo significant revisions after their first publication. In this paper we report the results of a...

In a first step, we developed based on existing theoretical and empirical literature a series of hypotheses with respect to the relative importance of possible determinants of exploration and exploitation of knowledge in collaboration with universities and tested them on Swiss firm data. In a...

In a pioneering attempt we present the R(ecession)-word index for Switzerland. We evaluate its predictive ability of GDP growth using real-time vintages of GDP data, closely simulating flow of information in the past. We find that inclusion of the R-word index led to statistically significant...

We evaluate nowcasts and one- to four-quarter-ahead forecasts of Swiss full time equivalent jobs from 1998-2011, comparing forecasts of the KOF Swiss Economic Institute and of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs with the outcome of the reference series. Both forecasts are biased downward,...

This paper investigates the relationship between indicators for the intensity of use of ICT (examining three different types of ICT widely used in firms: internal, e-sales, e-procurement IS), several forms of workplace organization, and human capital on one hand, and several measures of...

The paper complements entry mode research by dealing with the choice of alternative modes of governance in the specific case of foreign R&D and its impact on a parent firm's performance. Firstly, we identify the factors that determine whether a firm locates abroad any R&D activities, and, if it...

We estimate the causal effect of immigration on the labor market outcomes of resident employees in Switzerland, whose foreign labor force has increased by 32.8% in the last decade. To address endogeneity of immigration into different labor market cells, we develop new variants of the shift-share...