José V. Ramirez

Paying for Quietness: The Impact of Noise on Geneva Rents

Using the hedonic approach, this paper analyses housing market data to infer the impact of noise on rents in Geneva, Switzerland. Using three different databases, including a geographical information system (GIS), structural, accessibility and environmental variables were obtained for a large proportion of apartments rented in Geneva. The paper is thus in line with the new generation hedonic models, which exploit the vast potential of GIS to obtain large databases including detailed characteristics of the apartments. In addition, different and original measures of noise were used in order to assess possible differences of the noise impact on rents, while existing studies typically refer to a single noise index. This paper assesses the impacts of noise related to all sources, but also to airport noise only, while existing studies usually refer to road or aircraft noise. The results can be summarised as follows. First, it is shown that the impact of all sources of noise on rents at the level of the whole canton is about 0.7 per cent per dB(A) and about 1 per cent when considering exclusively airplane noise, in the airport area. Secondly, this impact does not change fundamentally depending on the different measures of noise used in the estimations. Thirdly, the impact of noise does not depend on the institutional structure of the market-i.e. it is relatively similar in the private rental sector and in apartments directly under government control, although in the former the dynamic of noise has a greater impact. Fourthly, the results show that noise also has a higher economic impact, when the background noise level is lower. And fifthly, air pollution has a distinct impact on rents, in addition to noise.

An Efficiency Comparison of Regional Employment Offices Operating under Different Exogenous Conditions

SummaryThis paper investigates the technical efficiency differences of a sample of regional employment offices (REOs) across Swiss cantons. Regular job-search assistance, registration and matching of unemployed workers with job vacancies performed by employment offices are all important active labour market policies (ALMPs) which are often ignored in the literature evaluating the impact of active measures. The analysis is carried out by means of a stochastic production frontier model estimated on a panel of employment offices observed over the period between November 2000 and December 2001. The results show that the specific exogenous conditions exercise influence over the technical efficiency of each employment office. Even though these conditions affect significantly the relative performance of regional employment offices, the managerial efficiency component does remain important. Finally, the job placement process is characterised by decreasing returns to scale.

The Demand for Football in Switzerland: An Empirical Estimation

This paper identifies the factors determining the attendance at football games in Switzerland. Our data covers three seasons of the top division of the Swiss football league, between 2001 and 2004, which includes a major revision of the championship rules in 2003-2004. We were able to gather a high amount of information, allowing us to take into consideration several factors not always accounted for simultaneously in the literature, such as ticket price, capacity constraint, TV coverage, as well as more traditional factors like uncertainty. In order to cope with problems imposed by capacity constraints as well as the panel dimension of the data, we make use of a random effects Tobit model. Among others, our results show that TV coverage does not have a significant impact on the number of spectators, and, except for FC Basel, the price-elasticity is relatively low, which indicates that football clubs could raise their gate revenues by increasing ticket prices. Furthermore, the new championship formula did clearly raise attendances.

Export Activity and Wage Dispersion: The Case of Swiss Firms

In this paper we use a large and detailed database to analyse the impact of export activity on wage dispersion in Swiss firms. First, earnings functions are estimated which take into account both observed and unobserved characteristics of individuals and firms. Then, an original decomposition is proposed which identifies the exact impact of each individual and firm characteristic on the wage dispersion observed, both within and between exporting and non-exporting firms. Our results suggest that the impact of export activity on wage dispersion is mainly a human capital story but also show significant differences between exporting and non-exporting firms with respect to firm characteristics and their marginal effects on wages.

Wage Inequality and Segregation between Native and Immigrant Workers in Switzerland: Evidence Using Matched Employee-Employer Data

This paper focuses on the empirical analysis of wage inequality and segregation between immigrants and natives in the workplace. Our approach accounts for the interaction between skill level and immigration status (work permit). First, we calculate exposure rates in order to analyze segregation at the firm level along these two dimensions. Second, we examine the role of segregation in the explanation of wage inequality between different skill-nationality groups. We use data from the Swiss Wage Structure Survey 2002 which records individual wages among a very large sample of establishments in all industries, covering approximately 42’000 firms and 1 million workers. Our results show that interfirm segregation is particularly pronounced for unskilled foreign workers and for recently arrived, highly skilled foreigners. The former earn lower wages than equally skilled Swiss workers and the latter are paid higher wages than highly skilled Swiss workers. In both cases, interfirm segregation accounts for almost the entire wage differential.

Unemployment rate and working‐hour constraints

In this paper, the nature of working‐hour constraints in the Swiss labour force using a sample of 14,523 observations is analysed. Three theoretical justifications of the existence of hours constraints are tested: the specific‐capital model, the agency model and the efficiency wage model. The first two models make opposite predictions regarding the trade‐off between working‐hour constraints and job tenure. The third model makes a prediction regarding the potential effect of the unemployment rate on the extent of working‐time constraints. Results indicate, first, that neither model of lifetime contracting (specific‐capital and agency) explains the observed extent of working‐hour constraints. Second, it is found that the unemployment rate confronting the worker in his or her labour market constitutes an obvious incentive to work more hours than he or she wants.

Do Foreigners Pay Higher Rents for the Same Quality of Housing in Geneva and Zurich

SummaryThe Geneva and Zurich housing markets are characterised by high proportions of foreigners and a large share of rental housing. This provides ideal conditions for testing whether foreigners pay more for the same quality of housing than Swiss households and whether flats in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of foreigners rent at a discount. Hedonic price equations using a rich dataset on dwellings and their occupants yield evidence of such discrimination and prejudice. They also suggest more complex relationships between tenant nationality, housing and neighbourhood quality, and rents.

The End of Compulsory School for Migrants: One More Year for Low-Track Students

Integration of migrants into the host country depends on many factors. Using a typology based on different forms of capital (financial and human, social, and political), we focus on migrant integration into the Swiss schooling system, as expressed by their track choice at the upper-secondary level. In particular, we examine whether school transitions of children from certain migrant communities are negatively affected by a lack of social capital. To do so, we estimate a reduced-form multinomial logit, using longitudinal data from the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland), for the period 1990-2007. While differing substantially between high-track and low-track students, results confirm our expectations: first, social capital matters independently of human and financial capital; second, while affecting all students, the impact of a lack of social capital is higher on high-track students. However, the accumulation of social capital, trough experience inside the schooling system, plays generally a greater role for low-track students, but results differ when several profiles of students are considered. In particular, among low-track male students, recent migrants are disadvantaged, compared to natives and first-wave migrants, as they are, ceteris paribus, more often oriented toward non-certifying remedial education. For both types of students, nationality dummies remain significant, suggesting that other factors are at play, such as cultural orientation towards effort or reception of a particular community in the destination country. Finally, structural compositions of middle schools explain almost all the remaining differences between schools (i.e. school effects), once individual and familial characteristics have been considered: while sharing the same school, low-track and high-track students face different socioeconomic and sociodemographic external effects on their transition probabilities.