This paper investigates the determinants of Swiss non-financial firms’ cash holdings overthe 1995 to 2004 period. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash andcash equivalents as the median UK or US firm. Our results indicate that there is a negativerelationship between asset...

Many countries are forging ahead with convenient balloting methods, in particularelectronic and postal voting, in order to re-engage voters. In this paper, we test whether thecost reductions with postal voting increase turnout. The empirical analysis is based on anewly collected data set on the...

Countries differ substantially in how they deal with politicians  that come from the public sector. Most constitutions include  incompatibility and  ineligibility rules  due  to  concerns about conflicts  of interest  and the politicization of the public  service.   We study  how...

Sorting of people on the labor market not only assures the most productive use of valuableskills but also generates individual utility gains if people experience an optimal match betweenjob characteristics and their preferences. Based on individual data on subjective well-being it ispossible to...

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? Inorder to answer this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit andPindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-membership. We develop a simplified model of twoperiods to study how the value of waiting...

This paper investigates the role that discrimination plays in the educational marginalizationof foreign youth commonly observed in European countries with a long guestworkertradition. Economic theory offers two basic explanations for discrimination ofthis form: taste-based discrimination arising...

We investigate the performance of a sample of German mutual equity funds overthe period from 1994 to 2003. Our general finding is that mutual funds, on average,hardly produce excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough tocover their expenses. This conclusion is drawn from a...

We use a dynamic framework and panel methodology to investigate thedeterminants of a firms’ time-varying capital structure. Our sample comprises706 European firms from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. overthe period from 1983 to 2002. If capital structure adjustment is costly, firmsmay...