Finally, the survey reveals that price rigidity stems primarily from contracts and cost-based pricing, rather than from menu costs.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The paper also shows that most price reviews don't lead to price changes and that cost pass-through is asymmetric: changes in inputs prices only lead to price increases but not decreases.
He finds that firms review their prices both at regular intervals and as a response to specific shocks and consider their competitors’ prices as a strong reference point for their own strategies. They often practice price discrimination and rarely automate price setting.
🚨🚨🚨 New article
How do Swiss firms set their prices? In a new paper, Pascal Seiler reports insights from a new comprehensive pricing survey among 1,555 Swiss firms.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
Their model is further calibrated on Swiss GDP and biodiversity data. The authors observe that while impact investing reduces GDP, it also reduces the damage caused to the environment and increases welfare.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
In their model, consumers can mitigate the damage to the environment by limiting their supply of capital to the consumption market. This behavior is an equivalent of impact investing, for instance based on ESG ratings.
🚨🚨🚨 New article: Can ”responsible investing” do any good? Thorsten Hens and Ester Trutwin develop a model that suggests that it can.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
When tested against inflation forecasting, the weighted gap performs comparably to the best individual methods — and more reliably than any single one across all conditions.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Their approach integrates 13 different methodologies, combining statistical methods with theory-based approaches. The result? A quarterly, historically consistent indicator of economic slack going back to 1980, published within 60–75 days of each reference quarter.
New article 🚨🚨🚨
Christian Glocker, Serguei Kaniovski and Philipp Wegmüller develop a new strategy for estimating the output gap, a key indicator of economic slack.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
Individuals who exhibit higher levels of affective polarization (i.e. who dislike their political opponents more) are more politically engaged yet report lower satisfaction with how democracy functions.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
They document an increase in affective polarization between 1999 and 2003, but find no comparable rise over the subsequent two decades.
Using a novel measure based on split-ticket voting, where voters combine candidates from multiple parties in parliamentary elections, the authors draw on centrally collected historical data going back to 1983.
🚨🚨 New article: How much do the Swiss dislike fellow citizens with different political views? Benjamin Jansen & Alois Stutzer study affective polarization using split-ticket voting in parliamentary elections.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
Overall, the co-movement of prices and wages in Switzerland was largely driven by common macroeconomic factors rather than by domestic wages.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
They also show that second-round effects of inflationary shocks propagate mainly through the inflation expectations channel. The direct contribution of wages to sustained inflation dynamics turns out to be modest even in periods with elevated inflation.
The authors find that pass-through from prices to wages is substantial, whereas the reverse effect is considerably more modest. Price movements are explained more strongly by imported inflation, inflation expectations, and economic slack.
New article 🚨🚨🚨
Jessica Leutert, Rolf Scheufele, and Selina Schön analyze wage–price pass-through in Switzerland over the period 1980–2019.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
Peer effects are also found to be important: individuals’ online shopping activity is noticeably influenced by shopping habits of neighbours and close relatives.
Want to learn more? The published paper is fully open-access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The authors find that younger, larger, and richer households, as well as those with worse access to physical retailers, are more active online shoppers. Additionally, more restrictive lockdown measures led to increased online shopping activity.
New article 🚨🚨🚨
Frédéric Kluser and Maximilian von Ehrlich sift through 22 million household consumption baskets to study online grocery shopping adoption.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
🚨 One more day: submission deadline 20 January 🚨
Remember to submit your paper or abstract to the 2026 Annual Congress of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (St. Gallen, June 4-5, 2026).
👉 www.sgvs.ch/conferences/...
@unisg.ch @swisseconomists.bsky.social
The authors apply their measure to study the effect of monetary policy. They find an expansionary short-run effect of unexpected restrictive monetary policy, confirming a counterintuitive hypothesis for small open economies recently put forward in the theoretical macro literature.
The index improves on existing measures by explicitly accounting for merchant churn and the shift from cash to card payments. The approach is validated by comparisons to national accounts and other external data series available at lower frequencies.
New article 🚨🚨🚨
Jonas Bruhin, Matthias Fengler, Winfried Koeniger and Robert Rohrkemper refine and analyse a high-frequency consumer spending index for Switzerland.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social
This suggests that fiscal equivalence can act as a financial disciplining device, provided that jurisdictions are given the required regulatory leeway.
Want to learn more? Read the article open access on link.springer.com/article/10.1...
In big municipalities, which enjoy greater financial flexibility, the author observes a stronger and borderline statistically significant response to the reforms: teacher spending fell by some 6%.
The article shows that reductions in matching grants from Swiss cantons to their municipalities did not, on average, lead to a reduction in per-pupil teacher expenditures. The paper shows that this is largely due to regulatory constraints limiting municipalities’ fiscal autonomy to adjust spending.
Does cost-sharing between upper-level and lower-level governments encourage overspending in the education sector? New article by Tobias Schib:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@mariusbrulhart.bsky.social @kaufmanndani.bsky.social