Firstly, we investigated the determinants of a) the propensity of Swiss firms to provide apprenticeship training, and b) the intensity of training (measured by the employment share of apprentices). We primarily were interested in the relevance as explanatory factors of the three constituent...

News consumers in many authoritarian countries read government-controlled sources even when independent sources are available. We test whether these choices reflect a preference for pro-government coverage versus persistent tastes for specific websites. We exploit textual data from news...

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...

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...

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...

We define annual shareholder meetings as contentious if one or more ballot items are likely to obtain sufficient shareholder votes to induce a firm to implement governance changes. Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we find that abnormal stock returns over the 40-day...

The innovation value chain (IVC) divides the innovation process into three separate links or activities: knowledge gathering, knowledge transformation and knowledge exploitation. Here, we report a comparative panel data analysis of the IVC in Ireland and Switzerland. Both economies are small,...

This paper analyzes the relationship between competition and R&D cooperation with universities and competitors. Our simple model predicts that more competitors reduce the incentives for horizontal cooperation as it diminishes the gains from "collusion". Assuming that the value of synergies and...

Aim of this study is to combine micro-aspects of firm behaviour with macro-aspects of business development and identify market conditions (for example, price competition) and firm characteristics (for example, type of R&D partners) that enable a firm to have a procyclical, anti-cyclical or...