Was Swiss federal fiscal policy 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 related to World War II. We find sustainability over the entire period. However, splitting the...

This paper examines the causality between the Swiss federal governments revenue and expenditure over the 1900 to 2002 period by estimating the short- and longrun relation within an error-correction approach that places more emphasis on the long-run relation as a source of the causal link. The...

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,...

The weak rationality principle is not an empirical statement but a heuristic rule for how to proceed in social sciences. It is a necessary ingredient of any 'understanding' social science in the Weberian sense. In this paper, first this principle and its role in economic theorizing are...

In this paper, institutions are described which are designed to reach sustainability of public finances in the Swiss cantons. These are on the one hand direct popular rights, the fiscal referendum in particular, which allow citizens to express their fiscal preferences. These are on the other...