How large are the economies of scale of living together? And how do partners share their resources? The first question is usually answered by equivalence scales. Traditional estimation and application of equivalence scales assumes equal sharing of income within the household. This paper uses...

In the second part of the 1990's Switzerland conducted an ambitious active labour market policy (ALMP) encompassing a wide variety of programmes. We evaluate the effects of these programmes on the individual employment probability of potential participants. Our econometric analysis uses...

We estimate the causal effect of having full health insurance on health care expenditures. We take advantage of a unique quasi-experimental setup in which deductibles and co- payments were zero in a managed care plan, and non-zero in regular insurance, until a policy change forced all...

We estimate the causal effect of having full health insurance on health care expenditures. We take advantage of a unique quasi-experimental setup in which deductibles and co-payments were zero in a managed care plan, and non-zero in regular insurance, until a policy change forced all individuals...

In this study we use hedonic models to measure the influence of noise nuisance on rents, costs and values of investment properties in Switzerland. Countrywide data is provided by institutional real estate investors. The effects are measured for aircraft noise, road traffic noise and railroad...

Deductibles in health insurance generate nonlinear budget sets and dynamic incentives. This paper uses detailed individual claims data from a large Swiss insurance company to estimate the response in health care demand to the discrete price increase that is generated by resetting the deductible...

Recent theoretical research has identified many ways how contracts can be used as rent-seeking devices vis-à-vis third parties, but there is no empirical evidence on this issue so far. To test some basic qualitative properties of this literature, we develop a theoretical and empirical framework...