In this paper we analyzed the violations of UIP for the Swiss Franc against the Dollar, the Euro, the Yen, the Pound and the Canadian Dollar using recent data up to fall 2008. This exercise provides the following main results : first the Swiss interest rate puzzle disappeared, i.e. mean returns...

So far the discussion in Switzerland about the social costs and benefits of higher capital requirements resulting from the new Basel III Accord and the Swiss Too Big To Fail legislation has been heavily qualitative. This paper provides a quantitative view and estimates the long-run costs and...

This paper provides an econometric analysis of the short-run impact of interest rates on the Swiss franc exchange rate covering the period January 2001 to June 2011 using daily data. Our model includes both the exchange rate of the Swiss franc against euro and dollar and uses the plausible...

As is well known, the uncovered interest rate parity fails in the short run but usually holds in the long run. This paper analyses the long and short run interest rate parity of 10 mayor OECD currencies and finds that there is a long run failure of the uncovered interest rate parity condition...

This paper revisits the puzzle of low returns on Swiss Franc assets using a new data set of portfolio holdings of residents and non residents at Swiss banks. The main findings are as follows. First, we find that the return anomaly is present only for fixed income assets and not for equity....

This paper extends the analysis of Junge and Kugler (2013) on the effects of increased capital requirements on Swiss GDP and obtains the following main results: First the Modigliani-Miller effect is robust with respect to a substantial extension of the data base and yields an offset of capital...

The link between federalism and economic performance is still ambiguous. Aiming at clarification, we improve on a widespread shortcoming by measuring federalism not just by one variable but by various institutions that constitute it. To this end, Switzerland provides for a laboratory as its 26...

Previous theoretical and empirical research has shown that policymakers have an incentive to centralize government activities in order to weaken the com-petitive pressure of fiscal federalism. We propose and test a positive model of fiscal federalism in which centralization is less likely to...