We study popular initiatives as an important element of direct democracy. The initiative process is modelled as a sequential game under uncertainty: petitioners collect signatures to qualify the initiative and elicit information about the initiative's winning probability. Politicians decide...

This paper presents new evidence on how the annuitization decision is affected by changes in the annuity's value. We take advantage of an unprecendented change in policy, which in 2004 moderated the super-mandatory Swiss occupational pension scheme: The 20 percent reduction in the rate at which...

This paper analyzes a recent ballot in which two virtually identical popular initiatives, both demanding a decrease in the legal age of retirement in Switzerland, led to differences in approval rates of nearly seven percentage points. Based on this unique natural experiment, the existence of...

Disability insurance (DI) beneficiaries lose part of their benefits if their earnings exceed certain thresholds (“cash-cliffs”). This implicit taxation is considered the prime reason for low DI outflow. We analyse a conditional cash program that incentivises work related reductions of...

Disabled insurance (DI) beneficiaries lose benefits if labor incomes exceed certain thresholds (so called cash-cliffs ). The high implicit taxation of employment income is considered one of the prime reasons for the low outflow from the disability insurance. This paper presents the results of...