Patenting government funded innovations as a strategy to increase budget for academic vaccine R&D

Songane, Mario

(Working Papers SES ; 509)

Vaccine development is a lengthy, expensive and risky venture, with the research and development (R&D) process costing billions of dollars. The pre-clinical stage of vaccine R&D is largely performed by academic research institutions, then continued by the pharmaceutical industry though licensing agreements, taking the most promising candidates to the clinical testing stage. Governments play a...

Direct and indirect effects based on changes-in-changes

Huber, Martin ; Schelker, Mark ; Strittmatter, Anthony

(Working Papers SES ; 508)

We propose a novel approach for causal mediation analysis based on changes-in- changes assumptions restricting unobserved heterogeneity over time. This allows disentangling the causal effect of a binary treatment on a continuous outcome into an indirect effect operating through a binary intermediate variable (called mediator) and a direct effect running via other causal mechanisms. We...

A substantial discount on ski passes : a synthetic control analysis

Wallimann, Hannes

(Working Papers SES ; 507)

The synthetic control method serves as an appropriate and promising approach to do quantitative comparison research. However, the method is rarely used in the context of tourism. We fill this research gap by applying the method to the case of a Swiss mountain destination. Alpine tourist destinations have suffered from a declining demand in the last decade. Fewer tourist visit ski resorts....

The effects of gender and parental occupation in the apprenticeship market : an experimental evaluation

Fernandes, Ana ; Huber, Martin ; Plaza, Camila

(Working Papers SES ; 506)

The apprenticeship market is the earliest possible entry into the workforce in developed economies. Since early labor market shocks are likely magnified throughout professional life, avoiding mismatches between talent and occupations e.g. due to gender- or status-based discrimination appears crucial. This experimental study investigates the effects of applicant gender and its interaction with...

Medical and nursery care with endogenous health and longevity

Schünemann, Johannes ; Strulik, Holger ; Trimborn, Timo

(Working Papers SES ; 505)

For the population over 65, nursery care expenditures constitute on average the largest share in total health expenditures. In this paper, we distinguish between medical care, intended to improve ones state of health, and personal care required for daily routine. Personal care can be either carried out autonomously or by a third party. In the course of aging, autonomous personal care is...

An introduction to flexible methods for policy evaluation

Huber, Martin

(Working Papers SES ; 504)

This chapter covers different approaches to policy evaluation for assessing the causal effect of a treatment or intervention on an outcome of interest. As an introduction to causal inference, the discussion starts with the experimental evaluation of a randomized treatment. It then reviews evaluation methods based on selection on observables (assuming a quasi-random treatment given observed...

Middle-income groups in Kenya : Conflicting realities between upward mobility and uncertainty

Neubert, Dieter

In: sozialpolitik.ch, 2019, vol. 1, no. 4, p. Article: 1.4

For more than a decade scholars mostly from economy and development studies have described the rise of a newly emerging ‘middle class’ in the Global South including Africa. This has led to a ‘middle class narrative’ with the ‘middle class’ as the backbone of economic and democratic development. Especially with regard to the stability of the position of the people in the ‘middle’,...

Routine workers in an increasingly automated world of work : Evidence from Switzerland

Kurer, Thomas

In: sozialpolitik.ch, 2019, vol. 1, no. 2, p. Article: 1.2

This paper explores the distributional consequences of technological change on midskilled routine workers in Switzerland in three steps: (1) The first part studies aggregate trends in the labor market and confirms the pattern of an eroding middle:The disadvantages of technological progress are concentrated on routine workers whose share in the labor force has drastically declined over time....

Editorial - Erosion of the Middle Class?

Budowski, Monica ; Schief, Sebastian

In: sozialpolitik.ch, 2019, vol. 1, no. 1, p. Article: 1.1

Health consequences of sterilizations

La Rupelle, Maëlys de ; Dumas, Christelle

(Working Papers SES ; 503)

In India, as in many developing countries, female sterilization is the main contraceptive method: 37% of women older than 25 are sterilized. However, no economic study assesses the effect of sterilization, providing guidance on efficient reproductive health policies. We analyze the consequences of sterilization for maternal health, considering the endogeneity of the decision. We exploit that...