Public Employment Service (PES) agencies and caseworkers (CW) often have substantial leeway in the design and implementation of active labor market policies (ALMP) for the unemployed, resulting in variation of usage. This paper presents a novel framework in which this variation is used for the...

Switzerland is a small country with rich cultural and geographic diversity. The Swiss unemployment rate is low, at only about half the OECD average. The rate has remained at that level since the year 2000, despite a massive increase in the foreign labor force, the Great Recession, and a currency...

Public Employment Service (PES) agencies and caseworkers (CW) often have substantial leeway in the design and implementation of active labor market policies (ALMP) for the unemployed, resulting in variation in the intensity of usage per policy. This paper presents a novel framework in which this...

Switzerland is a small country with rich cultural and geographic diversity. The Swiss unemployment rate is low, at around 4%. The rate has remained at that level since the year 2000, despite a massive increase in the foreign labor force, the Great Recession, and a currency appreciation shock,...

Public Employment Service (PES) agencies and caseworkers (CW) often have substantial leeway in the design and implementation of active labor market policies (ALMP) for the unemployed, resulting in variation of usage. This paper presents a novel framework in which this variation is used for the...

I investigate whether demand growth and productivity growth in Switzerland have benefitted from the wage moderation that set in at the beginning of the 1990s in this country. The results suggest that the Swiss demand regime is profit-led while the productivity regime is wage-led. This means on...

Macroeconometric policy simulation models allow for an analysis, and, above all, for a quantification of the effects different economic policies have on the various variables that represent the economy. Despite the seminal Lucas critique levelled against them, these models are still widely used,...

Der Beitrag verwendet das Modell des unbalancierten Wachstums von Baumol (1967), um zu zeigen, dass sich ökonomische Probleme reifer Volkswirtschaften - wie die Abschwächung des Wirtschaftswachstums, der Anstieg der Staatsquote und die Kostenexplosion im Gesundheitswesen - zwar erklären, aber...

Swiss policy makers created a unique link between unemployment benefits and Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) by making benefit payments conditional on program attendance after 7 months of unemployment duration. We evaluate the effect of Active Labor Market Programs and benefit entitlement on...

Social norms are usually neglected in economics, because they are to a large extent enforced through non-market interactions and difficult to isolate empirically. In this paper, we offer a direct measure of the social norm to work and we show that this norm has important economic effects. The...