The lemons model assumes that owners of used cars have an informational advantage over potential buyers with respect to the quality of their vehicles. Owners of bad cars will try to sell them to unsuspecting buyers while owners of good cars will hold on to theirs. Consequently, the quality of...

In the work of the Basel Committee there has been a tradition of distinguishing market from credit risk and to treat both categories independently in the calculation of risk capital. In practice positions in a portfolio depend simultaneously on both market and credit risk factors. In this case,...

This study applies rich data from the 2000 Swiss census to investigate the patterns of intergenerational education transmission for natives and second generation immigrants. The level of secondary schooling attained by youth aged 17 is related to their parents' educational outcomes using data on...

This paper aims to describe the calculation of environmental and health externalities caused by air pollutants, accidents and noise from different transport modes (road, rail, air) on the route Frankfurt-Milan. The investigation is part of the QUITS project (QUITS = Quality Indicators for...

The aim of this study is the analysis of so called socially responsible investments (SRI). First, the performance of SRI equity investment funds and equity indices is investigated using Jensen´s alpha as performance measure. The analysis considers market timing strategies of the fund management...

This paper analyses the relationship between past innovation output, competition, and future innovation input in a dynamic econometric setting. We distinguish two dimensions of competition that correspond to the concepts of product substitutability and entry barriers due to fixed costs. Based on...

The red herring hypothesis contends that the high health care expenditure in old age is caused by proximity to death rather than calendar age. Dissenters point to longitudinal data and claim that health care expenditure age profiles tend to steepen over time. The present paper tests the...

This paper contributes with empirical findings to the research on structural inequality and geographic concentration of European inventorship activity at the level of European micro regions. We analyze the spatial structure and dynamics of 43 technology fields (ISI-SPRU-OST concordance) and 6...

The size premium, defined as the outperformance of equities of small and medium-sized companies compared with the shares of large companies, is subject to strong cyclical fluctuations over time. This study examines the predictability of this premium for the Swiss stock market. The forecasts used...