The article deals with the issue of how negative interest rate policies, introduced in the second decade of the 21st century in some countries, affect certain macroeconomic indicators and bank performance. We concentrate specifically on Switzerland and Sweden. We use correlation analysis to...

Die vorliegende Studie diskutiert die Prognoseergebnisse für die Kostenentwicklung im Bereich der obligatorischen Kranken- und Pflegeversicherung (OKP). Innerhalb der deskriptiven Diskussion der Datenlage werden für die Kostengruppen wie auch die Kantone die letztjährigen Wachstumsraten mit...

With an outstandingly long data set of Swiss cantonal public finances we study whether the Swiss subnational level runs sustainable fiscal policies. Going back to the year 1905, we test for stationarity of cantonal public debt, revenue and spending and for cointegration between cantonal revenues...

Die 7. Ausgabe der "Grundlagen der praktischen Information und Dokumentation" (Erstausgabe 1972) heißt jetzt: „Grundlagen der Informationswissenschaft". Der Bezug zur Praxis und zur Ausbildung bleibt erhalten, aber der neue Titel trägt dem Rechnung, dass die wissenschaftliche theoretische...

This report provides an overview of the legal framework and regulation for the decommissioning of NPPs in Switzerland, as well as give an indication on current cost estimates and their accuracy. Additionally, it shows the current progress of the decommissioning process.

We test whether the proactive use of instruments of direct democracy by voters can help to explain fiscal sustainability of 25 Swiss cantons. Using data of all cantonal popular votes since 1977, our results show that the fiscal reaction of cantonal governments to an increase in the debt to GDP...

Like in many other countries, wealth inequality has increased in Switzerland over the last fifty years. By providing new evidence on cantonal top wealth shares for each of the 26 cantons since 1969, we show that the overall trend masks striking differences across cantons, both in levels and...

The aim of this study was to determine whether referendums affect stock price risks and returns, using an event study approach. Daily end period data for the Swiss stock market index, the STOXX European market index, and the Swiss/US exchange rate running from the beginning of 2004 to June 2021,...

Nachdem die Verhandlungen zu einem institutionellen Rahmenabkommen zwischen der Schweiz und der EU wegen politisch-institutionellen Uneinigkeiten abgebrochen wurden, stellt sich die Frage, ob die bilateralen Beziehungen angesichts der gemeinsamen Interessen nicht primär im wirtschaftlichen...

Switzerland is one of the most competitive countries in the world. Commercially successful innovation activities are an essential part of this achievement. However, for two decades, Swiss innovation surveys have shown a significant decline in the number of R&D active companies among all...

Consumers access foreign goods by purchasing them domestically or shopping abroad. We present new facts on cross-border shopping by Swiss households showing, for example, that prices of identical products are lower in neighboring countries, cross-border shopping shares fall with distance to the...

Background: Facebook ratings provide relevant information and data on hospital quality for individual patients, the hospitals themselves and the institutions responsible for the quality assessment of hospitals. However, there are still considerable doubts in the healthcare sector about the...

This paper documents a comparative application of algorithms to deal with the problem of missing values in higher frequency data sets. We refer to Swiss business tendency survey (BTS) data which are conducted in both monthly and quarterly frequency, where an information sub-set is collected at...

International migration, especially in recent years, has reached the top of the national and global political agendas because of its significant economic, social, and cultural implications in both sending and receiving countries. However, little is known about the impact of migration on...

This paper investigates the effects of Switzerland’s real effective exchange rate (REER) on its current account. Using dynamic empirical methods, we focus on exchange rate movements that are unrelated to real and monetary developments, i.e., those more likely to be driven by the Swiss...

“Trade Policy Reviews" analyse the trade policies and practices of each member of the WTO. The reviews consist of three parts: an independent report by the WTO Secretariat, a report by the government, and the concluding remarks by the Chair of the WTO’s Trade Policy Review Body. The opening...

While food trends are usually described over an entire population, this paper suggests distinguishing between inter- and pangenerational food trends. To classify the food trends for the total population as inter- or pangenerational, we used disaggregated household-based consumption data on 60...

We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the income tax-induced migration of foreign high-income households living in Switzerland by exploiting the differential tax treatment of UK and US households. While the two groups are similar in terms of non-tax sorting preferences, US households are...

This paper develops an index of Climate Policy Risk using text-analysis techniques on a large number of Swiss media articles for the period 2000-2022. The index captures a number of important international as well as domestic transition risk events. We consider two complementary approaches to...

What is in banks’ private information about borrowers, and how does it relate to physical distance and relationship length? Exploiting the Federal Reserve’s comprehensive supervisory loan-level dataset on corporate borrowers, we distinguish two dimensions of private information embedded in...

A lively debate has recently emerged about the consequences of the diffusion of the Internet. While many social scientists emphasize the beneficial economic consequences of the Internet some suspect that it has also disadvantages for users’ social capital. So far the existing empirical...

This paper examines the short-run immigration effects on prices for owner-occupied housing and rents in Switzerland, exploiting regional variation at the level of 106 local labour markets ("Mobilité Spatiale" regions) and 26 cantons, respectively. We propose two empirical strategies that...

We apply the Gross City Development Index (GCD-Index) by Ruiz Estrada and Park (2019) in the case of Berna, Switzerland. The GCD-Index calculation is based on the concept of city integral sustainable development platform. The platform consists of ten main structures, which are (i) Main...

Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, Swiss banks made significant Swiss franc loans to financial institutions in several European countries. By the fall of 2008, many of those Swiss banks were unwilling or unable to continue refinancing those loans. In mid-September 2008, following the collapse...

Results from cultural evolutionary theory often suggest that social learning can lead cultural groups to differ markedly in the same environment. Put differently, cultural evolutionary processes can in principle stabilise behavioural differences between groups, which in turn could lead selection...

This report depicts the relevant law concerning individuals’ disclosure of their personal data in Switzerland. Because of the expected total revision, this report does not only cover the Data Protection Act in its current version, but also the version that is to come into force by next year....

Die Verfügbarkeit qualitativ hochwertiger, örtlich erreichbarer, zeitlich flexibler Kinderbetreuung stellt eine Grundvoraussetzung der Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie dar. Österreich weist eine überdurchschnittliche Erwerbsbeteiligung von Müttern auf, zugleich findet diese...

This paper analyzes risk aversion in discriminatory share auctions. I generalize the k‐step share auction model of Kastl (2011, 2012) and establish that marginal profits are set‐identified for any given coefficient of constant absolute risk aversion. I also derive necessary conditions for...