Using Swiss data from 1983 to 2008, this paper investigates whether growth rates of the different measures of the quantity of money and or excess money can be used to forecast inflation. After a preliminary data analysis, money demand relations are specified, estimated and tested. Then,...

We examine whether Swiss federal fiscal policy was sustainable over the period from 1900 to 2002. We perform unit root and cointegration tests for federal revenues and expenditures, taking into account a structural shift in the budgetary process related to World War II. We find sustainability...

The impact of corporate income taxes on location decisions of firms is widely debated in the tax competition literature. Tax rate differences across jurisdictions may lead to distortions of firms investment decisions. Empirical evidence on tax induced relocation and subsequent economic...

Using data of Swiss referenda from 1981 to 1999, this paper presents new empirical results which allow us to discriminate better between the decision and mobilisation hypotheses of electoral participation. First, theoretical considerations which lead to these hypotheses are presented as well as...

There is an intensive dispute in political economics about the impact of institutions on income redistribution. While the main focus is on comparison between different forms of representative democracy, the influence of direct democracy on redistribution has attracted much less attention....

Tax competition is supposed to lead to inefficiencies in the provision of public goods and difficulties for decentralized redistribution. A necessary condition for these ef fects to occur is that residence and location decisions are determined by fiscal considerations. In this paper, the impact...

This paper documents a comparative application of algorithms to deal with the problem of missing values in higher frequency data sets. We refer to Swiss business tendency survey (BTS) data which are conducted in both monthly and quarterly frequency, where an information sub-set is collected at...

According to the Leviathan-Model, fiscal federalism is seen as a binding constraint on a revenue-maximizing government. The competitive pressure of fiscal federalism is supposed to reduce public sector size as compared to unitary states. However, empirical results concerning the Leviathan...