News
On behalf of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Swiss Economics has updated its findings on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical measures to combat the pandemic.
Swiss Economics has examined the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions ("NPI") to contain the coronavirus (to the Swiss Economics study) for a second time. This is an update of the meta-analysis on this topic commissioned by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) in June 2020. In addition to the question of the effectiveness of NPI, the study also evaluates the literature on the costs of particular measures and discusses the findings on factors such as the weather and the acceptance of NPI among the population. In the course of combating the pandemic, the question of the optimal level of intervention also arose in Switzerland. Another part of the study is devoted to this question.
Felix Wüthrich and Luca Apreda now Economist, Eva Zuberbühler und Nicolas Eschenbaum now Senior Economist
We are expanding our team:
Felix Wüthrich strengthens our team as an Economist in the areas of environmental economics, behavioural economics and data analysis. During his studies at ETH Zurich, Felix already completed an internship at Swiss Economics and subsequently supported our team as an Analyst.
Luca Apreda, now also Economist, has a focus on regulation and quantitative methods. After completing his Master's degree at the University of Bern, Luca joined Swiss Economics as an Analyst.
Dr. Eva Zuberbühler has been promoted to Senior Economist. Her expertise lies in the areas of regulation, competition, strategy and pricing. Prior to completing her PhD in industrial economics at the University of Bern, Eva worked as a corporate client advisor at a major bank
Dr. Nicolas Eschenbaum has also been promoted to Senior Economist. He focuses on competition economics and digital markets. Nicolas received his PhD in industrial economics from the University of St. Gallen and conducted postdoctoral research on the competitive impact of artificial intelligence, among other topics.
We congratulate all four and wish them much success and joy in their further work for Swiss Economics.
Michael Funk was asked about the consquences of the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA) by SRF's daily podcast "Newsplus".
The EU is working to improve the current regulatory framework for digital products. The introduction of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) is intended to create a uniform set of rules valid throughout the EU.
Michael Funk was asked by SRF about the consequences of the extensive package for Switzerland.
To the podcast (in German): https://www.srf.ch/audio/news-plus/eine-neue-aera-fuer-internet-giganten?id=12166241
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Nicolas Eschenbaum as a new team member of Swiss Economics. He will strengthen our competences in competition economics and regulation.
Nicolas Eschenbaum is an experienced economist focusing on competition economics and economics of digitization.
He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Finance from the University of St. Gallen with a thesis in industrial organization with a focus on digital markets. Prior to joining Swiss Economics, Nicolas worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St. Gallen, where he continues to conduct research and teach. Currently, his research focuses on the intersection of game theory and artificial intelligence.
We are pleased to announce that Matteo Mattmann has been appointed Managing Economist as of January 1.
We welcome Matteo Mattmann among the shareholders of Swiss Economics. As a member of the Management Board, he will develop our activities in health and behavioural economics. We wish him every success in his new position and look forward to thee continuing collaboration.
Since January 2021, Swiss Economics is a carbon neutral company. Swiss Economics minimizes greenhouse gas emissions and offsets emissions that cannot be avoided.
The exact principles with which we try to contribute to the achievement of Switzerland's climate goals can be found here.
For the year 2021, our employees have decided to offset by means of a reforestation project in Nicaragua. The offset is certified by myclimate.
The modernisation of Swiss merger control is the core element of the partial revision of the Cartel Act (KG). With its 2017 study about the SIEC test, Swiss Economics made an important contribution to the revision.
The partial revision of the KG envisages adapting the Swiss test for merger control to international practice. The fundamental difference between the market dominance test applied in Switzerland so far and the newly envisaged SIEC test lies in the level of the intervention hurdle. Under the SIEC test, mergers can be prohibited or subject to appropriate conditions if they lead to a "significant" impediment to competition. In contrast, under the current standard of review, this is only possible if a merger "completely" eliminates effective competition. In addition, the planned revision also aims to strengthen private damages actions and provides for several procedural changes as well as a clarification with regard to inadmissible agreements.
The consultation period lasts until 11 March 2022. It can be assumed that the new provisions will not enter into force before 2023/24.
Malou and Valpuri had the opportunity to spend the "Future Day" at Swiss Economics.
Highlights of their day in our office were conducting interviews and editing them into a video, behavioural economics experiments with a chocolate reward and eating pizza in the park. The thoughts of the two primary school students of their fathers' work are in the video below.
Ann-Kathrin Crede participated in the SRF programme "Club" on the topic of National Immunisation Week and contributed with her behavioural economics expertise to the question of how to incentivize people to vaccinate themselves.
Quelle: srf.ch
Swiss Economics/cryptecon continue to support the CV Labs Incubation Program for start-ups using the Blockchain technology.
Recently, Juan Beccuti joined CV Labs as a mentor for the start-ups' incubation program. Together with Matthias Hafner (who joined CV Labs in 2019), he shares his expertise in platform and token economics. They present and discuss with the program's participants the main characteristics, considerations, and decisions to consider when designing token-based ecosystems.
Presentation of the interim report in the project to hedge terror and pandemic risks at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin.
Swiss Economics, presented together with Christian Hott (from Economic Advice) the first results in the project on hedging terror and pandemic risks at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin.
Lilia is a quantitative economist strengthening our competencies in analyzing panel and time-series data. Lilia is proficient in English and German with mother tongue Russian.
Dr. Lilia Ruslanova is a quantiative economist focusing on empirical methods, econometrics and DCF modelling. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich. During her work as a doctoral student as well as research associate at the University of Zurich, she accumulated years of proficient experience in processing and analyzing data using various quantitative methods and statistical tools. The main fields of her research interests are International Macroeconomics, International Trade, Financial Regulation, Financial and Real Estate Markets.
Juan is a microeconomist and industrial engineer with a focus on market design. He will support Swiss Economics in platform and crypto economics.
Juan is an experienced economist focusing on platform economics, contract theory, and auctions. Amongst others, he will support our team in the analysis of incentives in crypto markets and blockchain protocols. Juan's mother tongue is Spanish, extending our reach into the Hispanic region.
Juan holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid with a dissertation about mechanism design. He also has a degree in industrial engineering. Prior to joining Swiss Economics full-time, Juan supported Swiss Economics as a Senior Fellow and worked as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Bern.
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.