Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes

Subsidised employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the reemployment chances of the unemployed. Using unusually informative individual data from administrative records, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidised temporary employment implemented in Switzerland: non-profit employment programmes (EP) and a subsidy for temporary jobs (TEMP) in private and public firms. Econometric matching methods show that TEMP is more successful than EP in getting the unemployed back to work. Compared to not participating in any programme, EP and TEMP are ineffective for unemployed who find jobs easily anyway or have a short unemployment spell. For potential and actual long-term unemployed, both programmes may have positive effects, but the effect of TEMP is larger.     

Three New Real Estate Price Indices for Geneva,Switzerland

This paper develops constant-quality price indices for three categories of real estate-apartment buildings, vacant land, and condominiums—for the city of Geneva, Switzerland. We use both the hedonic and repeat sales models to estimate the price level and, in turn, the rate of price change. The general pattern of each series suggests that real estate prices in Geneva were fairly stable throughout the 1970s, increased sharply during the 1980s, but gave back some of these gains in the early 1990s. Interestingly, the sharp rise in prices in the second half of the 1980s is very similar to that found in some regions of the United States. We also consider the problem, implicit in the repeat sales method, of revisions in previously estimated price indices as additional data become available in later years.     

Diminishing effects of location? Some evidence from Swiss municipalities, 1950–2000

This paper analyzes how location has affected, in the second half of the twentieth century, the population growth of 2889 municipalities in Switzerland. The analysis demonstrates the temporal relativity of location attributes, even for small territorial divisions, such as the Swiss cantons. However, we also show that, both absolute and relative location attributes have weakened over time as population growth predictors, apparently due to improving road infrastructures, and growing motorization. The study has been made possible by a detailed historical population and accessibility database available for Swiss municipalities. To the best of our knowledge, no database of such scope and quality is available for any other European country.     

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.     

Beyond the Urban–Suburban Divide: Urbanization and the Production of the Urban in Zurich North

Starting from current debates on ‘global suburbanism' and ‘postsuburbia', this article explores the changes that the former ‘urban periphery' of Zurich North has experienced in the last three decades. It mobilizes Henri Lefebvre's triadic concept of conceived, perceived and lived space in aid of an analysis of the profound urban transformations that can be observed. The construction of a new tramline serves as a guideline for an analysis of the implementation of new governance arrangements strengthening cross‐border cooperation between individual municipalities and new strategies of cooptation and expertise. This resulted in the production of new urban structures which led to a more densely woven and connected urban fabric primarily providing spaces for the headquarter economy and middle‐class housing. Concomitantly, great efforts have been made to create new public spaces, an urban image and even an urban atmosphere. These have proved at least partially successful, thus promoting a symbolic redefinition of the former urban periphery as a distinctively ‘urban' space. Conventional definitions and concepts no longer suffice to adequately understand such novel urban forms, leading to the conclusion that division into an ‘urban' and a ‘suburban' world is no longer a useful tool for urban analysis.     

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.     

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.     

THE URBAN LEFT IN POWER: Comparing the Profiles of ‘Municipal Socialists’ and the ‘New Urban Left’ in Swiss Cities

Today, many cities in post-industrial societies are strongholds of left and progressive political forces. Almost 100 years ago, left parties had instituted municipal socialism in several European cities. In this article, we compare these two periods of left urban rule by focusing on the long-term changes over the last 120 years in the socio-demographic profile of urban left elites in four major Swiss cities. Our analysis of left elected representatives at six key dates highlights the main differences between the municipal socialists of the interwar period and the new urban left that rules contemporary cities. The former are members of the working class, blue-collar workers without university education, while the latter are members of the upper-middle class, highly educated sociocultural professionals. The results of our analysis contribute to a better understanding of the sociological composition of urban left-progressive political forces, an aspect that is somewhat neglected in recent research on the urban left. We discuss the potential political implications and further research avenues for contemporary debates in urban studies, in terms of urban policy priorities and political mobilization.     

Interest Income Tax Evasion,the EU Savings Directive and Capital Market Effects*

The EU Savings Directive has been celebrated as a major political breakthrough in coordinating taxation in Europe. Against this background, the present paper evaluates the real‐world effects of this directive. The directive has left a loophole by providing grandfathering (exemption from withholding tax) for some securities. In this paper, we compare the pre‐tax returns of exempt bonds and comparable taxable bonds. If working around the Savings Directive is difficult for income tax evaders in Europe, then investors should be willing to pay a premium for bonds that are exempt from the withholding rate. Conversely, if such a premium is absent, then this suggests that the supply of existing loopholes (exempt bonds included) is large enough to allow tax evaders to continue evasion at no additional cost. The findings of our study are in line with this latter interpretation.