Nostalgia versus Pragmatism? How attitudes and interests shape the term sustainable agriculture in Switzerland and New Zealand

National public debates on sustainable agriculture are often framed by the respective attitudes and interests of the dominant stakeholders involved.     

The influence of taxes on migration: evidence from Switzerland

Empirical studies on the impact of taxation on migration havebeen limited by a lack of comparable data in an internationalcontext and a lack of variation in tax burdens within countries.A notable exception to the latter is Switzerland. Prior empiricalstudies on tax competition in Switzerland have had to rely onaggregated data. In general, these studies have been supportiveof the notion of tax competition, i.e., high earners tend torelocate to low-tax regions. The authors use an alternativepanel approach based on micro-data from the first three wavesof the newly established Swiss Household Panel. Despite activecommunity tax policies aimed at attracting new residents anda significant increase in tax-burden dispersion among communitiesin the past decade, no tax-induced migration is observed. Migrationdecisions are found to be strongly influenced by accommodation-relatedfactors that point to important housing-market effects.     

Income and distance elasticities of values of travel time savings: New Swiss results

This paper presents the findings of a study looking into the valuation of travel time savings (VTTS) in Switzerland, across modes as well as across purpose groups. The study makes several departures from the usual practice in VTTS studies, with the main one being a direct representation of the income and distance elasticity of the VTTS measures. Here, important gains in model performance and significantly different results are obtained through this approach. Additionally, the analysis shows that the estimation of robust coefficients for congested car travel time is hampered by the low share of congested time in the overall travel time, and the use of an additional rate-of-congestion coefficient, in addition to a generic car travel time coefficient, is preferable. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that the population mean of the indicators calculated is quite different from the sample means and presents methods to calculate those, along with the associated variances. These variances are of great interest as they allow the generation of confidence intervals, which can be extremely useful in cost-benefit analyses.     

Switzerland’s transition from flood defence to flood-adapted land use–A policy coordination perspective

This contribution examines Switzerland’s shift towards integrated flood risk management from a policy coordination perspective. The study applies a heuristic framework of policy coordination to explore how adaption needs promoted cross-sectoral policy coordination between hydraulic engineering and land use planning and enhanced coherence in flood policies targeting extreme flood events. To account for the temporal dimension in policy coordination, the article traces Swiss flood policies back to the early 1800s and distinguishes four phases of policy coordination. Across the four periods, the analysis focuses on (a) the drivers of policy coordination, (b) the manifestation of policy coordination in terms of policy frames, goals, instruments and subsystem involvement, and (c) the performance of policy coordination. Complemented by an in-depth case study of cross-sectoral flood policies in the Swiss canton Nidwalden findings show that the coordination between flood and land use policies has primarily been driven by three factors: (i) extreme floods as focusing events, (ii) an increasing problem pressure, and (iii) strategic reorientations in flood and land use policies. Today, flood risk management in Switzerland displays a high degree of sectoral interplay between hydraulic engineering and spatial planning. By fostering flood-adapted land uses Switzerland’s coordinated flood policies reduce the vulnerability to uncertain future changes in flood risk and strengthen the country’s capacities to mitigate damage in extreme floods events.     

The Limits to Artist‐Led Regeneration: Creative Brownfields in the Cities of High Culture

Despite the burgeoning literature on creative cities, seldom explored is the context of cities rich in cultural capital but more orthodox in their approach to preserving the autonomy of culture. This article discusses the status of artistic spaces occupying abandoned industrial premises (‘creative brownfields') in historic cities that traditionally shape their policies around prestigious cultural institutions (‘cities of high culture'). Based on comparative insights from St Petersburg and Lausanne, the article explores the relations and tensions between mainstream cultural governance and creative brownfields. While there is no lack of creative brownfields in these cities, their wider urban impact is found to be marginal; moreover, these sites represent dispersed instances of temporary occupations rather than situated clusters of creative actors. More than coincidental, this (lack of) spatialization is argued to result from a particular governmentality—that of high culture—which disregards, rather than promotes, spaces of alternative cultural governance. The article conceptualizes creative brownfields in cities of high culture as the ‘soft infrastructure' of cultural production, in contrast with those in ‘creative cities' as the ‘hard infrastructure' of urban production. The article also calls for a recognition of the local context of regulation and accumulation in understanding the cultural/urban interplay.     

瑞士争取国际组织职员职位和培养国际职员的主要做法

为向国际组织输送所需人才,瑞士联邦政府推出了一个针对性很强的“国际组织青年职员培训计划”。外交部接受有志成为国际职员的大学生和毕业生提出的申请,并通过网站提供国际组织以及如何到国际组织去工作的相关信息。政府还广辟渠道,除定期在自己的网站上并利用欧洲就业服务网介绍联合国机构以及其他国际组织机构岗位空缺情况,每还举办一次计算机等级考试,为联合国P2岗位、日本IO岗位和国际银行选拔所需人才。瑞士选拔和培养国际职员的经验值得我国借鉴。     

瑞士空气污染管制法及PM10和PM2．5的限排措施

瑞士的环境质量在世界上堪称一流,这得益于瑞士严格执行政府1985年出台的《空气污染管制条例》,在控制PM10和PM2．5排放方面,要求明确,措施得当。瑞士PM10和PM2．5的最大排放源分别为农林和居住与商业。瑞士在道路交通、铁路、水运和航空运输、施工机械与设备、燃烧、工业设备与生产流程以及农业等领域均采取了一系列的减排措施,如,规定柴油的含硫量不得超过10mg／kg,各种车辆须加装可以过滤包括PM2．5的新型高效尾气排放过滤器等等。瑞士的经验表明,有效控制PM10和PM2．5的排放量,一是要细化规章制度,二是要有必要的技术手段。     

瑞士个人产权住宅房屋低拥有率形成机制的深入研究

瑞士作为一个人均收入较高的发达国家,但国民购房的意识却非常淡漠,大部分人宁愿选择以租赁的方式解决居住问题。瑞士人拥有产权房屋的比例在西欧发达国家中所占比例最少,只占所有国民的34%,其中美国为62.5%,法国45%,本文通过对分布在瑞士5个州的1998户居民的抽样调查数据分析来探求该现象的合理解释。通过对众多相关要素的分析来对个人住房拥有率进行剖析,其中,特别对拥有和租赁的相对成本进行了重点研究,因为它与房屋售价、租赁价格与拥有后的使用成本密切相关,在上述影响因素中,产权人的使用成本与所得税政策、预期房屋价格上涨息息相关。本文也综合权衡了按揭贷款现行标准、租赁控制和各种政策对租赁房屋供给量所产生的影响,通过对税收、按揭标准、价格水平等因素进行一系列分析,估算出这些变量对房产拥有率的影响程度。本文得出以下结论:高房价——相对于租金对家庭收入来说是导致瑞士国民拥有住房比例较低的最重要影响因素。     

Publish or Perish? The Increasing Importance of Publications for Prospective Economics Professors in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

Abstract. Tenure decisions depend, among other factors, on a candidate's career age and publication record. We associate publications with journal articles indexed in EconLit and measure publication output in equivalents of both top‐five journal articles and European Economic Review (EER) articles. We find that the average age of a professor in the year of his/her first appointment is 38, i.e. he or she is appointed approximately eight years after completing the PhD. Between 1970 and 2006, the average publication record at the time of the first appointment is equivalent to 1.5 standardized top‐five articles or 2.3 standardized EER articles. Publication records vary across subfields and have become more substantial over time. We predict that someone aspiring to a tenured position after 2011 should aim at an equivalent of four standardized top‐five articles or six standardized EER articles.     

What is sustainable agriculture? Empirical evidence of diverging views in Switzerland and New Zealand

Public debates on sustainable agriculture tend to be shaped by dominant political stakeholders with a particular political agenda. They simultaneously contribute and respond to the formation of public opinion. In this paper, we investigate to what extent stakeholder attitudes and interests help explain national conceptions of sustainable agriculture and how these conceptions diverge between countries with different agricultural policies.For that purpose, we conducted two stakeholder perception surveys in Switzerland and New Zealand. The data analysis revealed that there are significant differences in perception between the two countries. While Swiss respondents felt that Swiss agriculture is already quite sustainable and that international trade and new technologies are likely to render it less sustainable, New Zealand respondents generally thought that economic and technological change is necessary to make agriculture more sustainable. The conservative Swiss attitude is in accordance with the country's defensive agricultural policy while the more progressive New Zealand attitude is clearly linked to its need to reconcile agricultural sustainability with national competitiveness.