This paper presents results on human capital accumulation for the Swiss economy. We find that the index of labor quality has grown at a rate of 0.5% per year from 1991 to 2006. The main sources are the growth in average levels of education and the passing of the baby boom cohort through the age...

This paper analyzes how apprenticeship training, i.e., work-based secondary education, affects personality traits compared to full-time school-based vocational or general education. Employing an instrumental variable approach that exploits the regional differences in the relative weight of...

This paper analyses the differences between national and international innovation cooperation in five European countries: Belgium, Germany, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland. We find that absorptive capacity, incoming spillovers, appropriability and risk-sharing are more important in an...

This paper analyses the relationship between competitive environment and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors. Our simple model suggests that cooperation creates benefits in terms of synergies but also induces costs due to spillovers. Since the value of these synergies and...

type="main" xml:id="ecot12045-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This study uses panel data of microfinance institutions across the world to compare production processes across regions, assess the relevance of unobserved heterogeneity and estimate economies of scale. Comparing a financial production process to...</p>