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And Action: TV Sentiment and the US Consumer
(2010)KOF Working PapersThe average American watches over five hours of television per day. We test whether sentiment in TV news shows influences the ordinary consumer in the US, and whether the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is better at explaining changes in private consumption than TV news sentiment. TV news sentiment, we find, can better explain the consumption behavior of US households, especially when combined with personal income and savings.Working Paper -
From Rags to Riches: How Robust is the Influence of Culture on Entrepreneurial Activity?
(2010)KOF Working PapersEntrepreneurial activity differs substantially across countries. While cultural differences across countries have often been proposed as an explanation, measuring a country's cultural characteristics suffers from various problems. This paper offers new evidence on the relative importance of cultural and institutional determinants of economic activity. In order to test the hypothesis that cultural factors influence entrepreneurial behavior, ...Working Paper -
The information content of capacity utilisation rates for output gap estimates
(2010)KOF Working PapersFrom a theoretical perspective, the output gap is probably the most comprehensive and convincing concept to describe the cyclical position of an economy. Unfortunately, for practical purposes, the concept depends on the determination of potential output, which is an inherently unobservable variable. In this paper, we examine whether the real-time estimates of the output gap as published by the OECD can be improved by referring to measures ...Working Paper -
Dealing with hierarchically clustered data
(2010)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungWorking Paper -
Basic research, openness, and convergence
(2010)Economics Working Paper SeriesWe study a model where economic growth is fueled by public basic-research investment and the importation of leading technology from foreign countries. In each period, the government chooses the amount of basic research, balancing the cost and benefits of stimulating growth through both channels. We establish the existence of steady states and the long-run share of technologically advanced sectors in the economy. Then, we explore how ...Working Paper -
How do unanticipated discoveries of oil fields affect the oil price?
(2010)Economics Working Paper SeriesThe Hotelling rule argues that the price for a nonrenewable resource adjusts to the shadow value of the resource, reflecting the remaining availability of the resource. We empirically test the Hotelling rule on the effect of unanticipated oil field discoveries. We do not find evidence for a significant adjustment of the price of crude oil to news about greater resource availability and therefore conclude that the price for crude oil does ...Working Paper -
Location decisions of firms
(2010)Arbeitsberichte Verkehrs- und RaumplanungBecause of the interdependence between resident population (e.g. as customers or manpower) and economic activities (e.g. shops or services), firm location decisions play an important role in comprehensive land use models. However, due to a lack of data at the micro level permit-ting the estimation of discrete choice models, there is only little research on this topic. In this paper, data from the commercial registers of three Swiss cantons, ...Working Paper -
What Determines the Innovation Capability of Firm Founders?
(2010)KOF Working PapersInnovative start-ups, not start-ups in general, seem to be important drivers of economic growth. However, little is known about how such firms look like. As activities of start-ups are strongly related to firm founders, we investigate this question focusing on the innovation capability of firm founders. We find that the combination of different founder characteristics such as university education (at best a combination of technical and ...Working Paper -
Insights into the Determinants of Innovation in Energy Efficiency
(2010)KOF Working PapersGiven the increasing interest in understanding (and supporting by means of public policy) innovative activity related to energy efficient technology (EET), I attempt to identify firm-level determinants of innovation and research in this field. A novel dataset of Swiss firms has been assembled by means of a survey in 2009, resulting in more than 2300 observations featuring various indicators of innovative activity and success. Applying ...Working Paper -
Testing the Growth Effects of Structural Change
(2010)KOF Working PapersAgainst the backdrop of Baumol’s model of ‘unbalanced growth’, a recent strand of literature has presented models that manage to reconcile structural change with Kaldor’s ‘stylized fact’ of the relative constancy of per-capita GDP growth. Another strand of literature goes beyond this, arguing that the expenditure shifts toward Baumol’s ‘stagnant’ sector stimulate rather than dampen long-term economic growth because of the human ...Working Paper