This paper investigates how rms' productivity is a ected by the relationship between organiza- tional practices and workers' level of education. Using rm-level panel data covering the period 2002 to 2008, I estimate complementarities among workers' level of education and a large set of...

We examine the effects of negative news reporting on companies' self-assessment of their business situation. We compare survey data in the manufacturing sector in Switzerland with thousands of newspaper articles which we scan for particular keywords. Simple OLS regressions do not show a...

We examine the effects of negative economic news reporting on companies' self-assessment of their business situation. In order to measure this negativity effect, we introduce a new daily business indicator for the Swiss manufacturing sector and examine the influence of newspaper articles, which...

In their introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on "Great Depressions of the 20th Century" (Vol. 5, 2002), Timothy J. Kehoe and Edward C. Prescott argue that in the last few years "great depressions" have hit two rich countries: New Zealand and Switzerland. We...

In order to correct the bias due to unit non-response for the KOF ETH Zurich's business (mail) surveys, we usually use the results of a second (phone) survey by the non-respondents. Taking the case of the survey 2000 on "Organization and Information Technologies" in the Swiss economy, we...

The paper investigates empirically the decision of firms to adopt Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based on a comprehensive specification of a "rank model" of technology adoption (complemented by "epidemic effects") using firm-level data for the Swiss business sector. The...

The aim of this paper is, firstly, to contribute to the understanding of innovation patterns in services. To this end, firms which are similar in terms of a large set of innovation indicators were grouped into clusters. For the Swiss case, it was possible to identify five clusters which exhibit...

The literature on the internationalisation of firms has paid little attention to SMEs. SME-oriented studies are predominantly descriptive or illustrating theoretical arguments, and those dealing with services are mostly confined to specific industries. The paper aims at correcting some of these...