Journal: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Abbreviation

Swiss J Economics Statistics

Publisher

SpringerOpen

Journal Volumes

ISSN

0303-9692
2235-6282

Description

Filters

2017 - 201972020 - 202515
Reset filters

Search Results

Publications 1 - 10 of 22
  • Does ICT affect the demand for vocationally educated workers?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Pusterla, Filippo; Renold, Ursula (2022)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    This paper examines the efect of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the demand for workers in Switzerland. We compare the hypotheses that an increase in ICT leads to upskilling or job polarization and investigate their implications for countries where vocational education and training (VET) is the most widespread education program at the upper secondary level. Using data from a large employer–employee survey, we create a novel measure of ICT based on the percentage of ICT workers within frms. This measure allows us to assess the impact of ICT on the educational composition of the workforce by exploiting variation over time. We fnd that ICT has an upskilling efect from 1996 to 2018: ICT decreases the demand for low-skilled workers while increasing the demand for high-skilled workers, especially those with a tertiary vocational education. These results strongly suggest that VET is a valid alternative to a strictly academic education, because workers with a tertiary VET degree are as good, or better, at adjusting to technological change as workers with a tertiary academic education.
  • A daily fever curve for the Swiss economy
    Item type: Journal Article
    Burri, Marc; Kaufmann, Daniel (2020)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    Because macroeconomic data is published with a substantial delay, assessing the health of the economy during the rapidly evolving COVID-19 crisis is challenging. We develop a fever curve for the Swiss economy using publicly available daily financial market and news data. The indicator can be computed with a delay of 1 day. Moreover, it is highly correlated with macroeconomic data and survey indicators of Swiss economic activity. Therefore, it provides timely and reliable warning signals if the health of the economy takes a turn for the worse.
  • How do Overnight Stays React to Exchange Rate Changes?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Stettler, Christian (2017)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    This paper analyses the effect of a change in the real exchange rate on the number of overnight stays in Swiss hotels. It uses unique three-dimensional panel data on the monthly number of overnight stays by the visitor’s country of origin in 141 Swiss communities during the ten-year period from January 2005 to December 2014. We find low exchange rate elasticities of 0.2 for cities, but much higher elasticities of 1.4 for touristic communities. On the source market side, we find large exchange rate elasticities for German, Dutch, and Belgian visitors, while travellers from France and Italy are less price sensitive.
  • Cost distribution and equity of climate policy in Switzerland
    Item type: Journal Article
    Landis, Florian (2019)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    Swiss targets for climate policy require significant reductions of emissions by 2050. While such reductions can be achieved in a cost-efficient manner by employing taxes on greenhouse gas emissions, such taxes tend to lead to a regressive distribution of policy cost among households. To counteract such a regressive outcome, tax revenue may be recycled in a progressive way. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model coupled with a microsimulation of household income and expenditure to examine the policy cost of different carbon tax policies and their distribution across households. I find that in the absence of revenue recycling, emission taxation leads to a regressive distribution of policy cost. I analyze different revenue recycling schemes (per-capita lump-sum transfers, reductions in labor taxation, and reductions in VAT taxation of necessary commodities) and their ability to avoid regressive outcomes.
  • Working from Home is Here to Stay, but How Does It Affect Workplace Learning?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Morlet, Guillaume Maxence Augusti; Bolli, Thomas (2024)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    This paper analyses how working from home affects workplace learning in terms of theoretical and practical knowledge during COVID19. We employ panel data gathered in monthly surveys of respondents in training companies between October 2020 and March 2022 to investigate this question. Apprentices in Switzerland are our case study. We address potential endogeneity concerns in two ways. First, we exploit variation across survey respondents and time in two-way fixed effects models. Second, we pursue an instrumental variable “shift-share”-type approach that leverages how occupations react to exogenous changes in working from home regulations. The results suggest that working from home has a significantly negative impact on practical knowledge but not theoretical knowledge, relative to frequenting the workplace. We do not find significant heterogeneity across company size. Similarly, our results do not vary significantly between occupations in which working from home is relatively more or less prevalent. Our findings remain robust to a wide range of robustness checks. Our evidence-based recommendations aim to preserve the acquisition of knowledge through workplace training.
  • The effect of a strict facial-mask policy on the spread of COVID-19 in Switzerland during the early phase of the pandemic
    Item type: Journal Article
    Nussli, Emanuel; Hediger, Simon; Spohn, Meta-Lina; et al. (2024)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    During several weeks in the second half of the year 2020, the cantons of Switzerland could choose to adopt the government-determined facial-mask policy, corresponding to mandatory facial-mask wearing on public transport, or a strict facial-mask policy, corresponding to mandatory facial-mask wearing on public transport and in all public or shared spaces where social distancing was not possible. We estimate the effect of introducing the strict facial-mask policy on the spread of COVID-19 in Switzerland during this first phase of the pandemic in 2020, using the cantonal heterogeneity in facial-mask policies. We adjust for social distancing behavior, weather, other non-pharmaceutical policies and further variables. We estimate a significant reduction in the expected spread of COVID-19 in the early pandemic if the strict facial-mask policy is adopted.
  • COVID-19 financial support to small businesses in Switzerland: evaluation and outlook
    Item type: Journal Article
    Brülhart, Marius; Lalive, Rafael; Lehmann, Tobias; et al. (2020)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    We analyse small businesses’ recourse to public support measures during the COVID-19 crisis using a survey of 1011 self-employed workers and small business owners in Switzerland. We find that “objective” measures of lockdown affectedness and economic structure explain fairly well how businesses availed of support measures to cover labour costs. Recourse to government-backed corona loans, however, appears to be driven to a larger extent by behavioural idiosyncrasies across firms. Specifically, previously indebted businesses took out corona loans more readily than those who had been debt-free before the pandemic. Since uptake is not well in line with firm fundamentals, we propose making loan repayments contingent on future profits. This will more effectively target and sustain businesses that are in trouble today but would be viable in the absence COVID-19. © 2020, The Author(s).
  • Nominal stability over two centuries
    Item type: Journal Article
    Kaufmann, Daniel (2019)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    I assess the stability of the monetary environment in Switzerland over the past two centuries. In order to control for transitory measurement errors, in particular in nineteenth century data, I use an unobserved-components stochastic-volatility model to extract the permanent trends from several nominal variables. The descriptive analysis of these trends suggests that the current monetary regime, flexible inflation targeting, provided a relatively stable monetary environment. Although the trends are quite stable for the nineteenth century, the estimates are imprecise. We should therefore be cautious when characterizing metal currency regimes as providing a stable monetary environment. A discussion of the results shows that the apparent success of flexible inflation targeting poses new challenges for the implementation of monetary policy because the trend decline in inflation was associated with a trend decline in nominal interest rates.
  • Fiscal policy responses to COVID-19 in Switzerland: a high-frequency dataset on federal and sub-federal policy announcements in the first year of the pandemic
    Item type: Journal Article
    Eichenauer, Vera; Gurtner, Remo; Oguz, Furkan (2025)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    The Swiss COVID-19 fiscal policy dataset includes detailed information on all fiscal support policies adopted in Switzerland in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Covering the period from February 2020 to February 2021, the dataset includes both quantitative and textual information about nine types of fiscal policy instruments announced by local governments in one of Switzerland’s 26 cantons (regional jurisdictions) or at the national level. The data has been hand-coded and primarily collected from official sources, including government decrees, minutes from ministerial meetings, and press releases. The dataset contains 1330 policy observations, with data coded into up to 23 variables. It allows for the analysis of differences in COVID-19 fiscal support measures across regions, their timing, the political decision-makers, the types of policies, and further characteristics. This data offers valuable insights for answering research questions related to fiscal policy and its links to various social and economic phenomena.
  • Growth impacts of Swiss steering-based climate policies
    Item type: Journal Article
    Marcucci, Adriana; Zhang, Lin (2019)
    Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics
    This paper studies the growth impacts of realizing two long-term carbon targets in Switzerland (reducing CO2 emissions in 2050 by 72% and 80% relative to 1990 levels) with alternative steering-based climate policies that include a uniform tax on the whole economy and differentiated tax schemes. For this analysis, we use the Computable Induced Technical change and Energy (CITE) model, a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with endogenous growth. We find that achieving the climate targets could lead to a slight decrease in utility and an increase in investments through the shift of labor from manufacturing to research. Higher investments coming from higher innovation could compensate the reduction in output due to the carbon policies, leading to relatively unaffected economic output. The economic structure adjusts following three drivers: energy intensity, substitutability from energy in the production of the intermediate varieties, and the relative attractiveness of research. Moreover, the results from the CITE model show that the economy-wide carbon tax is the most effective option when we consider the effects on utility. Differentiating the sectors regulated by the emission trading system (ETS) has relatively low impact while applying lower taxes on transport fuels results in lower utility driven by inefficiencies in the sectoral mitigation efforts. Finally, we find that the effects of increasing the stringency of the target (in terms of foregone utility) are independent from the policy instrument.
Publications 1 - 10 of 22