Towards the end of 2009, the world economy was recovering from its deepest recession since the end of World War II. Most countries around the world took resort to fiscal policy in order to foster this recovery. In this paper, we first discuss the pros and cons of discretionary fiscal policy from...

We evaluate nowcasts and one- to four-quarter-ahead forecasts of Swiss full time equivalent jobs from 1998-2011, comparing forecasts of the KOF Swiss Economic Institute and of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs with the outcome of the reference series. Both forecasts are biased downward,...

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the influence of income taxes on the choice of residence of taxpayers at the local level. The fact that Swiss communities can individually set tax multipliers thereby shifting the progressive tax scheme which is fixed at the cantonal (state) level...

In their introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on Great Depressions of the 20th Century (Vol. 5, 2002), Timothy J. Kehoe and Edward C. Prescott argue that in the last few years great depressions have hit two rich countries: New Zealand and Switzerland. We briefly...

Der hier vorgestellte multisektorale Sammelindikator für die Schweizer Gesamtkonjunktur weist gegenüber vergleichbaren Frühindikatoren für die Entwicklung des Bruttoinlandprodukts (BIP) eine Reihe von methodischen Innovationen auf und berücksichtigt eine vergleichsweise grosse Anzahl von...

This paper investigates the R&D persistence of R&D active firms in different markets with different intensities of competition, based on firm-level panel data for the period 1996-2008. In a dynamic setting of the empirical model it turns out that persistence is strongly related to market...

We evaluate nowcasts and one- to four-quarter-ahead forecasts of Swiss full time equivalent jobs from 1998q1–2011q4, comparing forecasts of the KOF Swiss Economic Institute and of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs with the outcome of the reference series. Both forecasts are biased...