News
We are delighted to welcome Nina Schnyder and Stephan Minger to the team and congratulate Andreas Stritt on his promotion.
Andreas Stritt has been with Swiss Economics since 2022 and has been promoted to Economist. He focuses on energy, transport and competition economics. He earned a Master's degree in economics from the University of Berne, with a focus on data analysis and industrial economics.
Nina Schnyder also joins the team as an Economist. She holds a Master's degree in Environmental Economics from the London School of Economics. After graduating, she worked as an energy and environmental consultant in London and Berlin and will continue to specialize in these areas at Swiss Economics.
Stephan Minger joins Swiss Economics as an Analyst. He holds a Master's degree in Economics from the University of St. Gallen with a focus on financial economics and data analysis. During his studies, he worked as a reasearch assistant in the areas of financial market econometrics, derivatives and monetary policy.
We are confident that their skills and experience will be a valuable addition to our team.
We warmly welcome Winand Emons to our team as a consultant!
We are pleased to welcome Prof. emer. Dr. Winand Emons as a counsel to the Swiss Economics team. He strengthens our team especially in the area of competition economics. Winand Emons has not only distinguished himself in research and teaching at the University of Bern, but has also held important positions as a member of the Competition Commission, Dean and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences and a member of the Research Commission of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). His work in his main research focus in the areas of law and economics, microeconomics and competition economics led to numerous publications in renowned journals.
We warmly welcome Winand Emons and wish him success and pleasure in his new activities for Swiss Economics.
Swiss Economics has supported the AZ Regionalfernsehen AG and CH Media in their applications for broadcasting licenses for the years 2025 to 2034.
AZ Regionalfernsehen AG successfully applied with Tele M1 and TeleBärn for the broadcasting licenses in the Aargau/Solothurn and Bern regions. An expert opinion from Swiss Economics was submitted as part of the application. Swiss Economics prepared a second report for CH Media too, that led to a similar success. CH Media has acquired with Radio Central the local radio broadcasting license for the Central-Switzerland region.
Our reports examined in particular the influence of the award of the license on the diversity of offerings and opinions. The focus was on the conflict of objectives between the strict structural independence of broadcasters and their possibility of offering a diverse program. The positive externality of media content for democratic decision-making, which justifies state support for public service, only exists if viewers are truly interested in the broadcasted content. Very small, but structurally independent media providers are usually unable to build up the necessary reach with their limited financial resources, e.g. due to the lack of economies of scale. In addition, there are strong incentives to provide a diverse program, particularly in concentrated media markets.
Swiss Economics concludes in its reports that the synergy benefits and the strengthening of regional media in journalistic competition outweigh any concerns regarding structural independence.
Click here for the project entry on our website.
We welcome Maida Sabotic and Elena Zarkovic to our team and congratulate Seline Spillman and Leah Meyer de Stadelhofen on their promotions.
Seline Spillmann joins our team as Economist. Her focus is on data analysis in various topics as well as labor economics. Among other things, she is active in the fields of competition economics and health. In her master she studied economics at the University of Zurich with a focus on econometrics. During her studies, she worked as a Research Assistant in the area of globalization and labor markets at the University of Zurich.
Elena Zarković joins us as an analyst. She studied economics and business administration in her bachelor's at the University of St. Gallen, where she also earned an additional certificate in Data Science Fundamentals. During her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research at the University of St. Gallen.
Maida Sabotic joins the Swiss Economics team as an Economist. Her areas of expertise include economic policy and data analysis. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics, Politics and History from the University of Zurich as well as Master's degree in Economics and Data Science. During her studies she worked at the Institute of Economics at the University of Zurich. After her Master's degree, she completed an internship in economic development cooperation at the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.
Leah Meyer de Stadelhofen joins our team as an Economist, focusing on behavioral economics, industrial economics and data analysis. Her areas of expertise include regulation, environmental economics, and energy. In addition, Leah joins our Romandie department and is thus involved in the development of Swiss Economics in French-speaking Switzerland and France. She holds a Master in Economics from the University of Lausanne with a specialization in Behavior, Economics, and Evolution. During her studies, she worked as a Teaching Assistant in Microeconomics.
We congratulate all of them and wish them much success and joy in their new activities for Swiss Economics.
We warmly congratulate our staff member, Nicolals Greber, on receiving the ACCL Award for his Master's thesis! The award ceremony took place on 19 September at the Atelier de la Concurrence in Bern.
In his Master's thesis, Nicolas Greber examined the behaviour of self-learning pricing algorithms. Recent studies have shown that certain AI pricing algorithms are able to learn tacit collusion in oligopoly models. Nicolas picked up there with his master's thesis, analysing the behaviour of two more recent AI pricing algorithms. The first algorithm, known as the "deep deterministic policy gradient", failed to achieve constant convergence. In contrast, the second algorithm, the "multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient", achieved consistent results in a Nash equilibrium. These findings were confirmed by various robustness tests.
We wish Nicolas all the best and success in his PhD at the University of Zürich and in his work for Swiss Economics.
Last weekend we celebrated our 15th anniversary with a visit to the power station, dinner and an overnight stay at the Grimsel Hospiz!
Last weekend we spent an unforgettable time together at the Grimsel Hospiz, surrounded by the breathtaking scenery of the Grimsel region.
Highlights included exciting excursions to the hydroelectric power plant and the impressive Aare Gorge, and a delicious 5-course meal. These experiences deepen our appreciation for 15 years of successful projects.
As passionate economists, we are proud of our continuous growth. This journey would not have been possible without our dedicated team and inspiring projects.
Here's to the next exciting chapters full of success and exciting projects!
In a recent presentation at the Blockchance conference in Hamburg, Matthias Hafner explored the factors that influence the stability of stablecoins and discussed how they relate to recent developments in CBDCs and the tokenization of real-world assets.
Drawing from recent literature, including his own research conducted at the University of Zurich, Matthias Hafner emphasized that the construction and management of collateral are key determinants of stablecoin stability. While externally derived collateral value may compromise the independence of the stablecoin ecosystem, collateral value derived from within the ecosystem carries the risk of death spirals, as observed with TerraUSD. Additionally, centralized management may offer cost-effectiveness but exposes the stablecoin ecosystem to the risk of bank runs, as exemplified by the recent USDC depeg incident.
Further, Matthias Hafner argued that the advent of CBDCs and tokenized real-world assets could potentially put pressure on the demand for stablecoins in the future. This could, for example, result in the need to introduce solutions for stablecoins that offer interest payments based on their underlying collateral.
More detailed information can be found here:
Blockchance presentation slides
Matthias Hafner's research on stablecoins
We are happy to announce that Matthias Hafner has been promoted to Principal. Nicolas Oderbolz has been supporting our team as an Economist since the beginning of this year.
Matthias Hafner supports our team with immediate effect as a Principal and remains the Director of the Center for Cryptoeconomics.
His areas of expertise include financial services, blockchains and cryptoassets.
With his expertise and many years of experience, he will continue to make an indispensable contribution to the further development of these areas. Matthias regularly advises large companies and public authorities and supports start-ups in the implementation of their projects. In addition, he is writing his dissertation and teaches at the University of Zurich on various crypto topics. Before joining Swiss Economics in 2016, he worked at the Competition Commission.
Nicolas Oderbolz has joined Swiss Economics as an Economist with a focus on regulation, health and blockchain. He is involved in various projects in the fields of energy, data analytics and cryptoassets.
Nicolas completed his Bachelor and Master studies in Economics at the University of Zurich, with a focus on empirical methods and data analysis. During his studies, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Zurich in the field of labour and development economics. He has been a valuable part of the Swiss Economics team since the summer of 2022.
We congratulate both of them and wish them much success and joy in their new activities for Swiss Economics.
The article "Blockchain und ihre Anwendungen" by Matthias Hafner and Dr. Christian Jaag was recently published in the quarterly issue of the zsis) Centre for Swiss and International Tax Law.
In their contribution, they explain how blockchain works through illustrative examples and use cases. In addition, they explain the legal classification of crypto-assets and show the limits of the technology.
The publication can be accessed here.
Matthias Hafner presented his research on stablecoins at the Wolfram ChainScience conference in Boston, USA.
The article, "The Four Types of Stablecoins: A Comparative Analysis" (jointly with Marco Henriques Pereira, Prof. Dr. Helmut Dietl, and Juan Beccuti) discusses the conditions under which stablecoins may lose their value. Among others, they explore the crash of Terra and the de- and re-peg of the USDC stablecoin.
Link to the slides: The Four Types of Stablecoins (swiss-economics.ch)
In less than a week, the Shanghai-update is going to be realized on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. This long-anticipated event in the blockchain community motivated us to discuss and compare staking designs of different blockchains in a series of blog post.
In our second blog post of this series, we analyze and compare the staking designs of different blockchains from an economic perspective. To make the information more accessible and compact, we also created a table which can serve as a quick reference.
You can find the whole publication and our new Company Profile on Medium.
Don't hesitate to follow us there to stay updated on our upcoming publications!
The Irish Commission for Aviation Regulation has published its draft decision on the maximum level of Airport Charges at Dublin Airport over the 2020-24 regulatory period. For the allowed rate of return on capital, the authority has relied on a report prepared by Swiss Economics.
Our report reflects that financial markets are currently undergoing exceptional times. Real government bond yields have fallen to a historically low level in the past couple of years, suggesting that the real expected return from risk-free assets is currently negative. Traditional approaches to estimating the cost of capital may fail to adequately capture the peculiarities of this new market environment. Hence, we assessed whether the ECB’s recent halt of quantitative easing is likely to have a significant effect on the market and analysed whether financial markets expect bond yields to rise again in the near future. Also, we considered evidence that expectations on equity returns may be more stable over time than underlying risk premia, indicating a so-called Total Market Return approach may be preferred over the traditional Equity Risk Premium approach to estimate the cost of equity.
The full report can be downloaded from the Commission for Aviation Regulation’s website.
Does digitalization require new rules for the international taxation of companies? OECD and the European Union try to change international tax law in favour of countries where consumption takes place.
In der aktuellen Ausgabe der Zeitschrift für Europarecht hat Christian Jaag zusammen mit Luzius Cavelti einen Leitartikel zum Thema «Die Bedeutung der Digitalisierung für das internationale Unternehmenssteuerrecht» publiziert.
At the inaugural Who's Who Legal Switzerland Awards ceremony on April 3, 2019, in Zurich, Christian Jaag received the Competition Economists Switzerland Expert of the Year 2019 Award. Each year Who's Who Legal presents awards to individuals that have performed exceptionally well in each of the featured practice areas according to Who's Who Legal's research.
Who's Who Legal finds that "at Swiss Economics, Christian Jaag is definitely a brilliant economist to work with according to sources. They note he is the strongest competition economist in Switzerland and enjoys a very good reputation for his work in the field."
To the article.
Michael Funk recently gave his interpretation of the influential Post Denmark II decision to an audience at the Annual Conference of the Leibniz ScienceCampus 2019 Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI).
At the Annual Conference of Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation, Michael Funk presented a Swiss Economics research paper on competition economics. He argues that a notional as-efficient competitor, often used in the economic assessment of abuse of dominance cases, can be too efficient to be of relevance in practice. In particular, joint costs, which are required to comply with a Universal Service Obligation, should not be considered sunk when determining the cost structure for other services or else there is a risk of imposing unrealistic efficiency standards on competitors.
Bundesnetzagentur published the latest benchmarking report by Swiss Economics. In the report, methodical details are carried out and the results are documented.
Swiss Economics, together with SUMICSID and IAEW carried out an efficiency comparison of electricity distribution system operators in the third regulatory period. Analyzed in detail was, among others, the illustration of decentralized generation. The published draft contains all important methodical aspects and documents the results. For the benchmarking, around 200 system operators were compared based on their cost efficiency. The final version will follow after the system operators have had the opportunity to comment on the draft.
Swiss Economics and COMCO present a case at the Annual conference of the Association of Competition Economists (ACE)
Screening tools can mitigate the dependency on whistleblowers and leniency applicants and enable the authorities to fight against bid rigging cartels proactively. The Investigation "See Gaster" in Switzerland was triggered by an ex-ante screening method developed by the Swiss Competition Commission. In the session, Yavuz Karagök (ComCo), Frode Steen (Norwegian School of Economics) and Michael Funk (Swiss Economics) discuss the strengths and weaknesses of screening methods with a concrete example.
Swiss Economics analyses the impact of the sharing economy on public transport.
Swiss Economics has investigated the impact of the sharing economy on public transport together with the University of Lucerne. Based on our discrete choice experiments we conclude that regulations are critical for the expected modal split.
Samuel Rutz's article «Screening for «Bid Rigging Does it Work?» was recently published in the Journal of Competition Law & Economics.
The article discusses a screening method to detect bid rigging cartels. Based on the findings of the authors, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) opened an investigation and sanctioned several firms for bid rigging.
Christian Jaag was named «leading expert» in the categories Legal Competition and Consulting Experts. Samuel Rutz was honoured as a «future leader» in the categories of Competition and Consulting Experts.
Dr. Christian Jaag and Dr. Samuel Rutz have recently been featured in Who's Who Legal 2018.
Christian is listed in Who's Who Legal: Competition as a leading economist. WWL says: «Christian Jaag is a superb competition economist who is regularly called on to advise both public and private-sector clients on strategy, regulation and policy.»In addition, he is listed in Who's Who Legal: Switzerland. WWL writes: «Christian Jaag is widely recognised as «a leading competition economist» and impresses peers with his «highly creative, precise and hands-on approach», as well as his «impressive theoretical and practical skills». Lastly, Christian is listed in Who's Who: Consulting Experts.
To Christian's biography on WWL
Samuel is listed as a future leader in Who's Who Legal: Competition and Who's Who Legal: Consulting Experts.
The article «The more economic approach to predatory pricing» was recently published in the Journal of Competition Law & Economics.
Abstract: The «more economic approach» was introduced to antitrust to achieve a more effect-based and theoretically grounded enforcement. However, related to predatory pricing it resulted in systematic over- and under-enforcement: Economic theory does not require dominance for predation to be a rational (and harmful) strategy, although an ex-ante dominant firm would often refrain from predation. Hence, within the current legal framework which requires dominance for antitrust to apply, a more effect-based and theoretically grounded antitrust enforcement cannot pursue harmful predation. Therefore, we suggest separating predatory pricing from the exclusionary abuse of a dominant firm, both legally and analytically. Instead, predatory pricing should be analyzed along the same logic as a merger. In particular, we argue that three elements from merger control should be adopted: in the absence of dominance, market share and/or turnover thresholds may serve as a de minimis rule; recoupment should be analyzed similarly to the competitive effect of a merger between the predator and its prey, and a stronger efficiency defence should be established.
The partnership with OCA strengthens Swiss Economics' competencies in the areas of calculation of damages. OCA will also allow us to more effectively support clients in multinational and multilingual disputes.
Swiss Economics is delighted to announce the recently established partnership with French audit and consulting firm OCA. This new collaboration strengthens our capacity to offer multi-jurisdictional and multilingual dispute resolution services.
OCA has successfully assisted its clients during commercial and financial arbitration and litigation across various countries. The firm's technical capabilities in the area of Corporate Finance and Valuation perfectly complement Swiss Economics' skills in Competition Economics and Industrial Organisation. In collaboration with OCA, we are able to offer our clients both, top-down empirical and conceptual economic evidence as well as detailed bottom-up asset valuation, leading to even more robust results.
In addition, the partnership will allow us to ramp up large-scale case teams proficient in German, French, and English and be able to provide our clients with rigorous analysis under tight time constraints.
For more information, please contact Swiss Economics Managing Partner Christian Jaag or OCA Chairman Mikaël Ouaniche.
We welcome two new team members.
Melanie Häner is a Consultant working on economic policy and competition projects
A lecture by Christian Jaag.
A lecture by Christian Jaag.