First, the institutions of direct democracy, referendum and initiative, are described. One of the main arguments against direct political rights is that citizens are often, or even generally, not enough informed or even incompetent to decide on important political issues. Therefore, the problem...

First, the challenges of the financial and economic crisis for macroeconomic theory are addressed. Then, the possibilities of Swiss fiscal policy to overcome this crisis or at least to mitigate its economic and social consequences are discussed. It is shown that these possibilities are rather...

Under which conditions is moral justification of taxation possible? This question does not only interest philosophers and economists from a scientific point of view, but can have considerable practical relevance as well because the willingness of citizens to pay taxes may depend upon whether...

In the presence of an endogenous treatment and a valid instrument, causal effects are (nonparametrically) point identified only for the subpopulation of compliers, given that the treatment is monotone in the instrument. Further populations of likely policy interest have been widely ignored in...

This paper studies profit-maximizing seller behavior when brand image affects consumer demand. We consider a seller facing a population of consumers with heterogeneous tastes regarding product quality and brand image. First, we analyze “active branding” by the seller through costly...

As any empirical method used for causal analysis, social experiments are prone to attrition which may flaw the validity of the results. This paper considers the problem of partially missing outcomes in experiments. Firstly, it systematically reveals under which forms of attrition - in terms of...

This paper discusses alternative transition strategies of moving towards an S-base cash-flow business tax. While the tax has attractive neutrality properties, moving from the current situation towards the new system often involves a stark trade-off between short-run losses and long-run gains. We...

The paper proposes a model where heterogeneous firms choose whether to undertake R&D or not. Depending on R&D choice, innovative firms are more productive, have larger investment opportunities and lower own funds than non-innovating firms. As a result, innovative firms are financially...

This paper presents new evidence on how the annuitization decision is affected by changes in the annuity’s value. We take advantage of an unprecedented change in policy in a number of Swiss occupational pension plans: The 20 percent reduction in the rate at which retirement capital is...

Nationwide health interventions are difficult to evaluate as contemporaneous control groups do not exist and before-after approaches are usually infeasible. We propose an alternative semi-parametric estimator that is based on the assumption that the intervention has no direct effect on the...