Working Paper
Recent Submissions
-
North-South diffusion of climate-mitigation technologies: The crowding-out effect on relocation
(2019)Economics Working Paper SeriesThe deployment of cleaner production technologies is crucial to mit-igate the effect of climate change. The diffusion of technology from developed todeveloping countries can be done through different channels. It can be a businessdecision such as firms’ relocation, creation of a subsidiary or the adoption of tech-nology by southern firms, or it may be decided at government level. This paperinvestigates in a two-country model (North and ...Working Paper -
Dirty versus clean firms’ relocation under international trade and imperfect competition
(2019)Economics Working Paper SeriesThis paper develops a simple partial equilibrium model with twocountries (North and South) to fathom the effects of firms’ relocation in a con-text of international and imperfect competition. Two different production tech-nologies are considered, a clean technology and a dirty one, and the effects ofrelocation according to the kind of technology used by the relocated firms aredetermined. Two heterogeneous firms in the North and only one ...Working Paper -
How effective was the UK carbon tax? A machine learning approach to policy evaluation
(2019)Economics Working Paper SeriesCarbon taxes are commonly seen as a rational policy response to climate change, but little is known about their performance from an ex-post perspective. This paper analyzes the emissions and cost impacts of the UK CPS, a carbon tax levied on all fossil-fired power plants. To overcome the problem of a missing control group, we propose a novel approach for policy evaluation which leverages economic theory and machine learning techniques for ...Working Paper -
Has the relationship between formal education and the formal employment sector in Nepal changed between 1995 and 2014?
(2019)KOF Working PapersWorking Paper -
Predicting response rates of all and recruited respondents
(2019)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungThis paper reports on the link between a well-defined measure of response burden and response rates among all (uncommitted) and pre-recruited respondents. We show within the limits of our sample of 68 survey waves (including pre-tests; resulting from 35 studies) that the response burden impact is mediated by the level of the commitment of the respondents and the presence of a monetary incentive. This is the first time that a research group ...Working Paper -
Coordinated railway traffic rescheduling with the Resource Conflict Graph model
(2019)EasyChair PreprintThe train rescheduling problem is quite a popular topic in the railway research community. Many approaches are available to reschedule traffic in a network partition, but very few works address the coordination of these partitions. In railway systems with very dense traffic, e.g. the Swiss one, it is not always possible to partition the network such that local rescheduling algorithms can work completely independently one from another. ...Working Paper -
-
The (Anti-)Competitive Effect of Intellectual Property Rights
(2018)KOF Working PapersWe test whether intellectual property rights (IPRs) foster or hinder innovation by estimating IV structural equations for a large sample of Swiss firms. We find that better appropriability conditions at the industry level raise the number of competitors. However, conditional on the given industry structure, individual firms face fewer competitors, if they actually use IPRs. The further impact of fewer competitors is to raise R&D, when ...Working Paper -
A Note on Weakening Free Choice in Quantum Theory
(2019)The non-extensibility of quantum theory into a non-trivial, noncontextual deterministic theory is based on a strong assumption of free choice, in which the physicists pick a measurement axis independently of the rest of the world. This same strong assumption of free choice is at the core of Nashian game theory. However, recent game-theoretical research based on a weakened version of free choice lead to non-trivial solution concepts with ...Working Paper -
mixl : An open-source R package for estimating complex choice models on large datasets
(2019)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungThis paper introduces mixl , a new R package for the estimation of advanced choice models. The estimation of such models typically relies on simulation methods with a large number of random draws to obtain stable results. mixl uses inherent properties of the loglikelihood problem structure to greatly reduce both the memory usage and runtime of the estimation procedure for specific types of mixed multinomial logit models. Functions for ...Working Paper -
Predicting response rates further updated
(2019)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungThis note updates the detailed analysis of response burden and response rates reported in Axhausen and Weis (2010) and Axhausen et al. (2015). It includes a first analysis of the co-operation rates of the sample. The analysis of the richer data set shows that the drop in response rate is proportional to the length and complexity of the questionnaire and gives updated logistic regression results to predict the response rates.Working Paper -
The Impact of Policy Awareness: Evidence from Vehicle Choices Response to Fiscal Incentives
(2019)Economics Working Paper SeriesIsolating the role of limited knowledge, psychological frictions and policy characteristics is key when evaluating a public program and designing future policies. This paper explores the role of awareness about the presence of fiscal programs in determining their impact on individual choices. Our identification strategy exploits quasi-experimental variation in the introduction of fiscal incentives aimed at promoting the purchase of energy ...Working Paper -
An approximation of the distribution of learning estimates in macroeconomic models
(2019)KOF Working PapersAdaptive learning under constant-gain allows persistent deviations of beliefs from equilibrium so as to more realistically reflect agents’ attempt of tracking the continuous evolution of the economy. A characterization of these beliefs is therefore paramount to a proper understanding of the role of expectations in the determination of macroeconomic outcomes. In this paper we propose a simple approximation of the first two moments (mean ...Working Paper -
An approximation of the distribution of learning estimates in macroeconomic models
(2019)KOF Working PapersAdaptive learning under constant-gain allows persistent deviations of beliefs from equilibrium so as to more realistically reflect agents’ attempt of tracking the continuous evolution of the economy. A characterization of these beliefs is therefore paramount to a proper understanding of the role of expectations in the determination of macroeconomic outcomes. In this paper we propose a simple approximation of the first two moments (mean ...Working Paper -
Locating Public Facilities: Theory and Micro Evidence from Paris
(2019)KOF Working PapersThis paper investigates the problem of the optimal location of public facilities. I develop a quantifiable model in which the central planner decides on a location strategy, which includes the geographical location and the capacity of public facilities, while anticipating how individuals and firms will react. The central planner's objective is to maximize aggregate welfare. I calibrate the model to fit the economic and geographic ...Working Paper -
-
-
Chinese development assistance and household welfare in sub-Saharan Africa
(2019)EUI Working Paper RSCASWe combine data on Chinese development projects with data from Demographic and Health Surveys to study the impact of Chinese aid on household welfare in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a novel methodology to test the effect of Chinese aid on three important development outcomes: education, health, and nutrition. For each outcome, we use difference-in-difference estimations to compare household areas near Chinese project sites to control areas ...Working Paper -
Analyse des Angebots von Catch a Car in Basel
(2018)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungCatch a Car wurde im August 2014 als erstes free-floating Carsharing-Angebot der Schweiz lanciert. Mittels einer wissenschaftlichen Begleitstudie hat das Institut für Verkehrsplanung und Transportsysteme der ETH Zürich seither die Auswirkungen des free-floating Carsharing auf das Verkehrsverhalten seiner Mitglieder und auf das städtische Verkehrssystem untersucht. In einer ersten Studie in 2014 und 2015 wurden Informationen zu den ...Working Paper -
Energy-related financial literacy and bounded rationality in appliance replacement attitudes: Evidence from Nepal
(2019)Economics Working Paper SeriesBounded rationality is an example of an important behavioral failure responsible for the energy-efficiency gap, whereby agents under-invest in energy-efficient technologies. One means of addressing this is by improving the energy-related financial literacy of households, which is defined as the combination of energy knowledge and cognitive abilities that are needed in order for agents to take sound decisions with respect to investment in ...Working Paper