Asset prices tend to undergo wide swings around long-run equilibrium values which can have detrimental effects on the real economy. To get a better understanding of how the financial sector and the real economy interact this paper models the long swings in the Swiss franc-US dollar foreign...

Formal fiscal rules have been introduced in many countries throughout the world. While most studies focus on intra‐jurisdictional effects of fiscal rules, vertical impacts on the finances of other levels of governments have yet to be explored thoroughly. The paper investigates the influence of...

In this study, I provide evidence that the educational achievement of second-generation immigrants in German-speaking Switzerland is greater than in Germany. The impact of the first-generation immigrants' destination decision on their offspring's educational achievement seems to be much more...

We use payroll data on 1.2 million bank employee years in the Austrian, German, and Swiss banking sector to identify incentive pay in the critical banking segments of treasury/capital market management and investment banking for 66 banks. We document an economically significant correlation of...

Regulation is no longer an isolated discipline – in recent years it has become a key strategic factor for financial intermediaries competing in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world marked by exchange of information and international cooperation. Applied regulation means...

This paper estimates intertemporal labor supply responses to two-year long income tax holidays staggered across Swiss cantons. Cantons shifted from an income tax system based on the previous two years' income to a standard annual pay as you earn system, leaving two years of income untaxed. We...

Recent popular referendums gave rise to increased public and scholarly debate on how civic participation affects traditional democracies. Particularly, the debate revolves around the question as to what opportunities referendums hold for populist parties. Referendums can be regarded either as...

We study how a reform that granted EU workers free access to the Swiss labor market affected Swiss firms. Our firm-level Differences-in-Differences estimations exploit the fact that the reform incidentally affected firms close to the border more strongly. We find that the reform increased...

This paper analyses the importance of fiscal mechanisms for regional risk sharing and redistribution in Switzerland. Switzerland is a particularly interesting setting in this context because it features both a high level of fiscal autonomy for Swiss cantons and explicit fiscal transfers between...

We analyze the effect of negative monetary policy rates on banks, using detailed supervisory information from Switzerland. For identification, we compare changes in the behavior of banks that had different fractions of their central bank reserves exempt from negative rates. More affected banks...