{"title":"Digital technologies and performance incentives: evidence from businesses in the Swiss economy.","authors":"Johannes Lehmann, Michael Beckmann","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Using novel survey data from Swiss firms, this paper empirically examines the relationship between the use of digital technologies and the prevalence of performance incentives. We argue that digital technologies tend to reduce the cost of organizational monitoring through improved measurement of employee behavior and performance, as well as through employee substitution in conjunction with a reduced agency problem. While we expect the former mechanism to increase the prevalence of performance incentives, the latter is likely to decrease it. Our doubly robust ATE estimates show that companies using business software and certain key technologies of Industry 4.0 increasingly resort to performance incentives, suggesting that the improved measurement effect dominates the employee substitution effect. In addition, we find that companies emerging as technology-friendly use performance incentives more frequently than their technology-averse counterparts. Both findings hold for managerial and non-managerial employees. Our estimation results are robust to a variety of sensitivity checks and suggest that Swiss businesses leverage digital technologies to enhance control over production or service processes, allowing them to intensify their management of employees through performance incentives.</p><p><strong>Supplementary information: </strong>The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41937-024-00132-3.</p>","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"161 1","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11782451/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143081298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-border shopping: evidence from household transaction records.","authors":"Frédéric Kluser","doi":"10.1186/s41937-025-00141-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-025-00141-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cross-border shopping expands product variety and lowers prices for consumers in high-price countries, but it diminishes domestic tax revenues, reduces sales, and shifts demand away from local retailers. Exploiting Switzerland's COVID-19-induced border closure as a natural experiment, I investigate the socioeconomic implications of cross-border shopping. Linking detailed grocery transaction records for 710,000 households to administrative data, I find that the border closure raises domestic grocery expenditures in border areas by an additional 10.4%. The benefits of cross-border shopping, however, are heterogeneous, and larger and lower-income households exhibit a particularly strong propensity to shop abroad. Based on these patterns, I estimate an annual loss of 1.5 billion Swiss francs in domestic grocery sales, equivalent to 3.8% of the total market.</p>","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"161 1","pages":"9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12405040/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145001511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The macro-financial effects of Climate Policy Risk: evidence from Switzerland","authors":"Brendan Berthold","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00122-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00122-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":" 5","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140212149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anne Darline Youmbi, Betrand Fesuh Nono, Christian Zamo Akono
{"title":"Inequality in opportunity of access to antenatal care in Cameroon: multilevel modelling, spatial analysis and decomposition methods","authors":"Anne Darline Youmbi, Betrand Fesuh Nono, Christian Zamo Akono","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00121-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00121-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"37 10","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140231682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Working from home is here to stay, but how does it affect workplace learning?","authors":"G. M. Morlet, Thomas Bolli","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00123-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00123-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"88 6","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140239542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capturing Swiss economic confidence","authors":"Philipp Wegmueller, Christian Glocker","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00120-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00120-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"83 2","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139780247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capturing Swiss economic confidence","authors":"Philipp Wegmueller, Christian Glocker","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00120-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00120-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"38 6","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139840152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Emanuel Nussli, Simon Hediger, Meta-Lina Spohn, M. Maathuis
{"title":"The effect of a strict facial-mask policy on the spread of COVID-19 in Switzerland during the early phase of the pandemic","authors":"Emanuel Nussli, Simon Hediger, Meta-Lina Spohn, M. Maathuis","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00119-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00119-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"37 13","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139784126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What wages do people expect for vocational and academic education backgrounds in Switzerland?","authors":"Maria Alejandra Cattaneo","doi":"10.1186/s41937-023-00118-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-023-00118-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"66 17","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139381726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexander Goetz, Ioana Marinica, Harald Mayr, Luca Mosetti, Renate Schubert
{"title":"Do mobile applications foster sustainable mobility? Evidence from a field experiment.","authors":"Alexander Goetz, Ioana Marinica, Harald Mayr, Luca Mosetti, Renate Schubert","doi":"10.1186/s41937-024-00129-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41937-024-00129-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mobile applications hold promise to foster sustainable mobility behavior, but evaluations of their effectiveness are subject to a number of empirical challenges. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with three distinctive features: unobtrusive tracking of the control group, limited sample attrition, and a representative sample. In our study, 410 participants track their mobility behavior over a 5 week period. After 1 week, the treatment group engages with the user interface of the \"Swiss Climate Challenge App\". The user interface combines information on individual <math><msub><mtext>CO</mtext> <mn>2</mn></msub> </math> emissions with gamification features. We find a treatment effect that implies a <math><mrow><mn>9.8</mn> <mo>%</mo></mrow> </math> reduction in emissions caused by access to the mobile application. While we lack the statistical power to exclude a zero average effect, we find statistically significant emission reductions in the second half of the intervention period, among subjects in medium population density areas, and among men. Our findings suggest that mobile applications could generate considerable net benefits, but larger studies will be needed for validation.</p>","PeriodicalId":36872,"journal":{"name":"Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics","volume":"160 1","pages":"12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11420393/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142355697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}