The paper aims at explaining empirically the diffusion of E-commerce based on two largescale sample surveys conducted in the Swiss economy. The paper adds to previous work in two ways: firstly, we estimate separate models for E-selling and E-purchasing, and, secondly, we distinguish between...

For many years, Business Tendency Surveys on the basis of mailing suffer from an erosion of the response rate. To counter this problem, there are traditional methods as limitation of the number of questions, improvement of the design of the questionnaire, intensified recalls by mail or...

In order to correct the bias due to unit non-response for the KOF ETH Zurich's business (mail) surveys, we usually use the results of a second (phone) survey by the non-respondents. Taking the case of the survey 2000 on "Organization and Information Technologies" in the Swiss economy, we...

The paper investigates empirically the decision of firms to adopt Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based on a comprehensive specification of a "rank model" of technology adoption (complemented by "epidemic effects") using firm-level data for the Swiss business sector. The...

This paper describes the approach applied and the results of an evaluation of the effects of the Swiss government programme to promote the diffusion of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) from 1990 to 1996. The method used is based on specifying and econometrically estimating with firm...

We apply different matched-pair methods to evaluate the policy of sustaining the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies by Swiss firms and we compare it in decomposing the selection bias. In this aim we present the evaluation problem, the decomposition of the selection bias and the...