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Purpose: This study examines how potentially irresponsible banking operations affect organisational reputation. A moderated mediation model is applied to explain how major aspects of social irresponsibility affect the relationship between consumer awareness of allegedly irresponsible operations, blame and bank reputation. The empirical context is the Swiss franc mortgage crisis that affected the banking industry in most Central and Eastern European countries. Design/methodology/approach: The research study uses data collected from a large survey (N = 1,000) conducted among Polish bank consumers, including those with mortgage loans in Swiss francs. To test the proposed model, the authors use Hayes' process macro. Findings: The findings show that blame fully mediates the effects of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) awareness on organisational reputation. Three facets of social irresponsibility moderate this relationship. Specifically, the perceived harm and intentionality of corporate culprits cause people to be more likely to blame a bank for the difficulties posed by indebted consumers. At the same time, the perceived complicity of consumers in misselling a mortgage reduces the level of blame and its subsequent adverse effects on bank reputation. Originality/value: Although a strong reputation is crucial in the financial industry, few studies have attempted to address reputational risk from a consumer perspective. This study helps to understand how potentially irresponsible selling of a financial product can adversely affect a bank's reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jump dynamics in financial markets exhibit significant complexity, often resulting in increased probabilities of subsequent jumps, akin to earthquake aftershocks. This study aims to understand these complexities within a multifractal framework. To do this, we employed the high-frequency intraday data from six major cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dashcoin, EOS, and Ripple) and six major forex markets (Euro, British pound, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Swiss franc, and Japanese yen) between 4 August 2019 and 4 October 2023, at 5 min intervals. We began by extracting daily jumps from realized volatility using a MinRV-based approach and then applying Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) to those jumps to explore their multifractal characteristics. The results of the MFDFA—especially the fluctuation function, the varying Hurst exponent, and the Renyi exponent—confirm that all of these jump series exhibit significant multifractal properties. However, the range of the Hurst exponent values indicates that Dashcoin has the highest and Litecoin has the lowest multifractal strength. Moreover, all of the jump series show significant persistent behavior and a positive autocorrelation, indicating a higher probability of a positive/negative jump being followed by another positive/negative jump. Additionally, the findings of rolling-window MFDFA with a window length of 250 days reveal persistent behavior most of the time. These findings are useful for market participants, investors, and policymakers in developing portfolio diversification strategies and making important investment decisions, and they could enhance market efficiency and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a sequential statistical procedure to test for the presence of level shifts affecting bounded time series, regardless of their order of integration. The article shows that bounds are relevant for the statistic that assumes that the time series are integrated of order one. In contrast, they do not affect the limiting distribution of the statistic that is defined for time series that are integrated of order zero. The article proposes a union rejection statistic for bounded processes that does not require information about the order of integration of the stochastic processes. The model specification is general enough to consider the existence of structural breaks that can affect either the level of the time series and/or the bounds that limit its evolution. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that the procedure works well in finite samples. An empirical application that focuses on the Swiss franc against the euro exchange rate evolution illustrates the usefulness of the proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a four-state regime-switching model that pairs low-volatility and high-volatility (HV) states to test eight stock–safe-haven asset portfolios' risk properties. We find the correlations between gold, U.S. T-bond, and the Swiss franc and stock markets are negative or zero in all states, including the HV–HV state, while the correlations between Bitcoin (BTC) and stock markets are positive in the HV–HV state, implying that gold, T-bond, and the Swiss franc are full safe-havens and BTC is a partial safe-haven asset. Moreover, our model is effective in portfolio construction, performing better than conventional time-varying generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity-based models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Business Studies is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What are the unequal effects of changes in consumer prices on the cost of living? In the context of changes in import prices (driven by, e.g. changes in trade costs or exchange rates), most analyses focus on variation across households in initial expenditure shares on imported goods. However, the unequal welfare effects of non-marginal foreign price changes also depend on differences in how consumers substitute between imported and domestic goods, on which there is scant evidence. Using data from Switzerland surrounding the 2015 appreciation of the Swiss franc, we provide evidence that lower-income households have higher price elasticities. We quantify the contribution of heterogeneous elasticities for the unequal welfare effects of observed price changes between 2014 and 2015 and for counterfactual shocks to the mean and dispersion of import price changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vector autoregressive (VAR) model has been popularly employed in operational practice to study multivariate time series. Despite its usefulness in providing associated metrics such as the impulse response function (IRF) and forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD), the traditional VAR model estimated via the usual ordinary least squares is vulnerable to outliers. To handle potential outliers in multivariate time series, this paper investigates two robust estimation methods of the VAR model, the reweighted multivariate least trimmed squares and the multivariate MM-estimation. The robust information criteria are also proposed to select the appropriate number of temporal lags. Via extensive simulation studies, we show that the robust VAR models lead to much more accurate estimates than the original VAR in the presence of outliers. Our empirical results include logged daily realized volatilities of six common safe haven assets: futures of gold, silver, Brent oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil and currencies of Swiss Francs and Japanese Yen. Our sample covers July 2017–June 2020, which includes the history-writing price drop of WTI on April 20, 2020. Our baseline results suggest that the traditional VAR model may significantly overestimate some parameters, as well as IRF and FEVD metrics. In contrast, robust VAR models provide more reliable results, the validity of which is verified via various approaches. Empirical implications based on robust estimates are further illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the time-varying spillover effects and connectedness between the euro and other EU and non-EU currencies after the end of the sovereign-debt crisis. We employ the Quantile Vector Autoregression connectedness approach using intraday data for seven currencies (the euro, the British pound, the Swiss franc, the Polish zloty, the Hungarian forint, the Czech koruna, and the Norwegian krone) spanning from 1 January 2016 to 30 November 2022. The results indicate that, almost in all quantiles, the currencies of Eastern European Group countries (i.e., Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) are net contributors of information spillovers to other currencies, while currencies of non-EU countries (Switzerland, UK, and Norway) are net takers. Further, we find that the euro is the highest transmitter of net information spillovers to all other currencies until 2021. Interestingly, after 2021, the euro changes to net information spillover taker from all other currencies; highlighting that external shocks (e.g., COVID-19, the energy crisis) have significant risk spillover effects on the European currency market. Policymakers and market participants could benefit from knowing which currency drives developments to avoid unexpected consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel data set comprising bid–ask quotes for foreign exchange swaps from individual dealers, we examine the consequences of the Swiss National Bank's sudden termination of the Swiss franc/euro minimum exchange rate in 2015 on other pegged currencies. Our findings indicate a spillover effect as dealer banks began to reassess the risk associated with unexpected peg terminations, subsequently leading to wider bid–ask spreads for pegged currencies. This highlights that, even in strong economies, the credibility of a currency peg is influenced not only by the actions of the respective central bank but also by the stability of other pegged currencies. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01117. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the mediation effect of trading volume to explore the relationship between investor sentiment, measured as a volatility forecast (VIX), and the return of tech companies based on the mediation analysis. This paper focuses on Tesla, a list of the 30 largest technology companies and the MSCI World Index. It implements this mediation analysis by using an ARMA-EGARCH model for the time series of Tesla stock and the MSCI World Index returns and a Fixed-Effects regression model for stock returns of the list of 30 technology companies. Estimation results show that trading volume mediates the relationship between investor sentiment and stock returns. The mediating effect found in the case of Tesla and the MSCI World Index is much more present than regarding the list of companies. Furthermore, to obtain an all-encompassing analysis and create less dependence on proxy selection, additional mediation analyses are incorporated that include the 10-year Treasury yields, prices of the Swiss franc currency and the Baker-Wurgler index as investor sentiment proxies. The results show that the mediating effect of the trading volume is present also for these proxies providing more evidence that such a mediating effect is the underlying mechanism in stock markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Elektronik Industrie is the property of Hüthig GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

• A published model was used to estimate and compare the health and economic outcomes of three pneumococcal vaccination strategies (PCV15, PCV13 and no vaccination) for 65 years-and-above in Switzerland. • The PCV15 strategy prevented the largest number of pneumococcal disease cases and deaths when compared to the no vaccination strategy. • The PCV15 strategy dominated (more effective and less costly) the PCV13 strategy. • Under various ranges of uncertainty around the input parameters, the PCV15 strategy maintained a favorable incremental cost-effectiveness ratio when compared to the no vaccination strategy. To assess the health and economic outcomes of a PCV13 or PCV15 age-based (65 years-and-above) vaccination program in Switzerland. Interventions: The three vaccination strategies examined were: 1) Vaccination with PCV13. 2) Vaccination with PCV15. 3) No vaccination (do-nothing alternative). Target population : All adults aged 65 years-and-above. Perspective(s) : Switzerland health care payer. Time horizon : 35 years. Discount rate : 3.0%. Costing year : 2023 Swiss Francs (CHF). Study design : A static Markov state-transition model. Data sources : Published literature and publicly available databases or reports. Pneumococcal diseases (PD) i.e., invasive pneumococcal diseases (IPD) and non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia (NBPP); total quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), total costs and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (CHF/QALY gained). Using an assumed coverage of 60%, the PCV15 strategy prevented a substantially higher number of cases/deaths than the PCV13 strategy when compared to the No vaccination strategy (1,078 IPD; 21,155 NBPP; 493 deaths). The overall total QALYs were 10,364,620 (PCV15), 10,364,070 (PCV13), and 10,362,490 (no vaccination). The associated overall total costs were CHF 741,949,814 (PCV15), CHF 756,051,954 (PCV13) and CHF 698,329,579 (no vaccination). Thus, the PCV13 strategy was strongly dominated by the PCV15 strategy. The ICER of the PCV15 strategy (vs. no vaccination) was CHF 20,479/QALY gained. In two scenario analyses where the vaccine effectiveness for serotype 3 were reduced (75% to 39.3% for IPD; 45% to 23.6% for NBPP) and NBPP incidence was increased (from 1,346 to 1,636/100,000), the resulting ICERs were CHF 29,432 and CHF 13,700/QALY gained, respectively. The deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses demonstrated the robustness of the qualitative results—the estimated ICERs for the PCV15 strategy (vs. No vaccination) were all below CHF 30,000/QALYs gained. These results demonstrate that using PCV15 among adults aged 65 years-and-above can prevent a substantial number of PD cases and deaths while remaining cost-effective over a range of inputs and scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Biosimilars are biologic drugs that have the potential to increase the efficiency of healthcare spending and curb drug-related cost increases. However, their introduction into hospital formularies through initiatives such as non-medical switching must be carefully orchestrated so as not to cause treatment discontinuation or result in increased health resource utilization, such as additional visits or laboratory tests, among others. This retrospective cohort study aims to assess the impact of the introduction of CT-P13 on the healthcare expenditures of patients who were treated with originator infliximab or CT-P13. Methods: Gastroenterology, immunoallergology and rheumatology patients treated between September 2017 and December 2020 at a university hospital in Western Switzerland were included and divided into seven cohorts, based on their treatment pathway (i.e., use and discontinuation of CT-P13 and/or originator infliximab). Costs in Swiss francs were obtained from the hospital's cost accounting department and length of stay was extracted from inpatient records. Comparisons of costs and length of stay between cohorts were calculated by bootstrapping. Results: Sixty immunoallergology, 84 rheumatology and 114 gastroenterology patients were included. Inpatient and outpatient costs averaged (sd) CHF 1,611 (1,020) per hospital day and CHF 4,991 (6,931) per infusion, respectively. The mean (sd) length of stay was 20 (28) days. Although immunoallergology and rheumatology patients had higher average costs than gastroenterology patients, differences in costs and length of stay were not formally explained by treatment pathway. Differences in health resource utilization were marginal. Conclusions: The introduction of CT-P13 and the disruption of patient treatment management were not associated with differences in average outpatient and inpatient costs and length of stay, in contrast to the results reported in the rest of the literature. Future research should focus on the cost-effectiveness of non-medical switching policies and the potential benefits for patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the article is to characterize the specificity of fx mortgage housing loans (especially in Swiss francs in Poland), to present the conditions for granting them and to assess the financial and economic consequences, as well as the impact on the banking sector of the cancellation of these loan agreements. Design/methodology/approach: The article has been prepared based on studies of literature in the field of banking and finance, analysis of the legal acts and sectoral data from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority and the National Bank of Poland, as well as data coming directly from banks granting FX housing loans. The paper also uses own calculations using the annuity account. Findings: The research conducted in the paper indicates that the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the years 2019-2023 and the adopted line of case law of Polish courts, which mainly provides for the cancellation of mortgage loan agreements in foreign currencies, contributed to the emergence of systemic credit risk among exposures that were considered to have the highest quality in the banking sector. The cancellation of loan agreements became a source of long-term free capital for fx borrowers, for whom the terms of lending in foreign currency were in many cases more favorable compared to loans in the Polish zloty. Disputes related to foreign currency loans place a significant financial burden on banks. On the one hand they cause the need to establish provisions and write-offs, and on the other hand, they contribute to the erosion of the equity and reduce growth potential of banks and ability to compete. The value of losses due to solving the problem of Swiss franc loans in Poland, estimated at approx. PLN 100 billion, may cause the bankruptcy of individual systemically important banks, as exemplified by Getin Noble Bank, and significantly reduce the capital adequacy of the entire sector, thus significantly reducing its ability to finance the economy. The legal and monetary conditions of 2020-2023 strongly encourage borrowers to take legal action against banks and limit the willingness to conclude settlements. Research limitations/implications: The study was conducted in the legal and financial conditions of 2023, in which the final number of lawsuits and settlements in the banking sector has been unknown, and thus the amount of real losses to be incurred by banks and the Polish economy. Originality/value: The article fills a research gap in the area of assessing the situation of foreign currency borrowers in Poland, the legitimacy and financial consequences of the cancellation of Swiss franc loan agreements as a result of the CJEU case law of 2019-2023 systemically sanctioning the beneficial settlement of disputes concerning Swiss franc loans for the benefit of borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Randomized controlled trials of pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) for treating atrial fibrillation (AF) have proven the procedure's efficacy. Studies assessing its empirical cost-effectiveness outside randomized trial settings are lacking. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of PVI versus medical therapy for AF. We followed a target trial approach using the Swiss-AF cohort, a prospective observational cohort study that enrolled patients with AF between 2014 and 2017. Resource utilization and cost information were collected through claims data. Quality of life was measured with EQ-5D-3L utilities. We estimated incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) from the perspective of the Swiss statutory health insurance system. Patients undergoing PVI compared with medical therapy had a 5-year overall survival advantage with a hazard ratio of 0.75 (95% CI 0.46-1.21; P =.69) and a 19.8% SD improvement in quality of life (95% CI 15.5-22.9; P <.001), at an incremental cost of 29 604 Swiss francs (CHF) (95% CI 16 354-42 855; P <.001). The estimated ICER was CHF 158 612 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained within a 5-year time horizon. Assuming similar health effects and costs over 5 additional years changed the ICER to CHF 82 195 per QALY gained. Results were robust to the sensitivity analyses performed. Our results show that PVI might be a cost-effective intervention within the Swiss healthcare context in a 10-year time horizon, but unlikely to be so at 5 years, if a willingness-to-pay threshold of CHF 100 000 per QALY gained is assumed. Given data availability, we find target trial designs are a valuable tool for assessing the cost-effectiveness of healthcare interventions outside of randomized controlled trial settings. • What is the real-world cost-effectiveness of pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) compared with standard medical therapy for patients with atrial fibrillation? • In this economic evaluation designed with a target trial approach including 2379 patients with real-world clinical, quality of life, and costing data, we estimate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of PVI compared with standard medical therapy to be 158 612 Swiss francs per quality-adjusted life-year gained (1 US dollar ∼ 0.93 Swiss francs) at 5 years and 82 195 per quality-adjusted life-year at 10 years. • In our target trial emulation-based cost-effectiveness assessment, PVI for the management of atrial fibrillation might be cost-effective over a 10-year period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, the UCTD has become one of the core EU directives aiming at the protection of both businesses and consumers (B2C), i.e., at the achievement of the appropriate balance between the parties' rights and obligations. However, the UCTD has also left quite a number of important legal questions unanswered. Besides the general clauses on the assessment of the unfairness of contractual terms, there remains a high degree of uncertainty as to the meaning of the transparency requirement and the legal consequences of unfair contractual terms. As a result, in spite of CJEU settled case law, as well as European Commission interpretation guidelines, there are diverging patterns in the national case law of the Member States. The aim of this paper is to investigate these diverging patterns by looking more closely into national case law and into the relationship between the CJEU and the Member States courts, taking as a case study the way in which the UCTD was applied in five countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Italy and Poland) in cases involving consumer loans indexed to the Swiss franc. The survey shows that there are noticeable differences in the interpretation of core concepts underlying the UCTD, such as the unfairness test, the exclusions from the unfairness assessment, and the transparency requirement. The most problematic areas, however, concern the legal consequences of the unfairness of contractual terms. By relying on the analysis of these and related issues, the authors have come to the conclusion that 347 even after 30 years of the existence of the UCTD, there are still many important legal questions that need solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research was aimed at understanding the effects of exchange rate volatility on UAE's international trade. To examine the effects, 10 of the top trading partners of UAE were considered for this study. Additionally, in order to determine the volatilities of UAE's top 10 trading partners' currencies, the GARCH (1,1) model was used. After that the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing approach determined the long-run relationship between the volatilities of the currencies and the trade of UAE. Furthermore, the short-run relation between volatility and trade was detected using the Granger causality test. The results indicated that in the long run the volatility of the Chinese Renminbi, the Euro and the Saudi Riyal affect UAE's exports, while UAE's imports in the long run are affected by the volatility of the Iranian Rial and the Euro as well. On the other hand, the volatilities of the Indian Rupee and the Omani Riyal tend to affect UAE's exports in the short term, however, the imports of UAE in the short run are actually affected by the volatilities of the Euro and the Swiss Franc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will allow the interpretation of exchange rate fluctuations for several international currencies, the EUR—European currency and the CHF—Swiss Franc, respectively. The fractal dimension versus box-counting dimension, together with the fractal dimension versus log scale for CHF and EUR, respectively, are thoroughly presented. The exchange rate time series for CHF and EUR during March–June 2022 were also analyzed. The Hurst exponent H was numerically evaluated. By the application of directional symmetry (DS) statistics, the model efficiency in predicting the direction modification of time series has been verified. Ultimately, the prognosis of EUR-RON and CHF-RON exchange rates of the time series fluctuations for the last months (August–December) of the year 2022 was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the cross-sectional drivers of credit returns for Swiss franc corporate bonds in a comprehensive sample including trade-based prices and effective bid-ask spreads from 2007 to 2022. Characteristics for momentum, carry, value, and defensive explain a significant part of the variation in future credit returns across companies. Value is based on a market-based credit risk model. Except for carry, the characteristics also deliver positive risk-adjusted returns. These results are robust for trade-based prices and different subsamples but transaction costs significantly reduce the profitability of the characteristics. After transaction costs, value and a combination of the characteristics remain profitable and continue to deliver significant risk-adjusted returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has suggested that firms can significantly reduce their exposure to moderate exchange rate fluctuations by means of pass-through and hedging. Studying the appreciation of the Swiss franc by 17% on January 15, 2015, we show that firms remain exposed to extreme currency events. Pass-through, a way to share the costs of exchange rate risk with foreign customers, fails after extreme exchange rate shocks, particularly in competitive industries. Firms' exposure to currency tail risk has real consequences for their investment. The decrease in investment is explained by a reduction in profitable investment opportunities and not by financial constraints. (JEL G15, G32, F30, F31, E58) Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix , which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the Croatian Swiss franc loans crisis and debtors' movement in the context of the wider politics of housing finance after the 2000s credit and housing boom. The movement mainly contested Swiss franc loans through litigation and demands for regulation of predatory lending practices. This selective and institutional articulation of the issue reflected the urban middle-class background of the movement's constituency and its ambivalent position of having stakes in the financialized housing regime while resisting some of its consequences. Political and financial elites supported a relaunch of a more regulated version of finance-led, state-subsidized housing provision. The structural conditions resulting from the postsocialist housing privatization and the hegemonic ideology of homeownership have been instrumental in preserving the established model. Even then, the CHF loans experience contributed to a slow and gentle shift in the politics of housing towards a possibility of, and calls for, a less ownership-dominated and financialized model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Feature is the first regional and holistic comparative study of Swiss franc (CHF) mortgages in Eastern Europe from the mid-2000s up to now. We examine this form of lending as a critical mechanism of the dependent financialization of housing in the region and look at its political and class-based repercussions in the four most significant national cases: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Serbia. This introduction reviews and connects the so far largely separate threads of research on CHF lending (on its political economy, partisan and movement politics, and debtors' experiences), summarizes the case studies, and draws out their key comparative insights. While lending waves originated in the same macrostructural relations and produced similar booms and crises, the management of the crises diverged significantly, depending on macroeconomic conditions, the projects of political elites, and debtors' class background and modes of contestation. The two main openings for contestation were litigation and political pressure, with varied limitations and results across national contexts. While delivering some important achievements, the politics of debtors' movements remained limited to a single-issue and legalistic contestation of specific predatory lending practices, which ultimately defended mortgaged homeownership from excessive financial predation. This reflects middle-class debtors' position in the multi-scalar hierarchies of dependent financialization, and the fact that litigation was the main state infrastructure available for their contestation. We argue that more progressive reactions to housing financialization would require movement infrastructures that are able to address the multiple scales of dependent financialization, and forms of cross-class local organization that are able to pursue agendas beyond available state infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a historical trajectory of Polish Swiss franc debtors, a group consisting of around 700,000 households commonly known as frankowicze, and provides a critical discourse analysis of social debates around their debt crisis. Initially convinced by banks that the franc was a stable currency, debtors saw their outstanding debt and monthly repayments soar after the czarny czwartek (Black Thursday) event in 2015 when the Swiss National Bank unpegged the franc from the euro. Social movements appeared and brought the issue from the private to the public sphere, but no political intervention followed. As a result, a frankowe tsunami of lawsuits is flooding the Polish judiciary with the help of specialized for-profit law firms. As most debtors belong to the middle class and are typically imagined to reside in gated communities or newer suburban developments, they have historically been unlikely candidates for sympathy in media and public discourse. The attempts of contestation, including a pivotal 2019 European Court of Justice verdict, have contributed to a reframing of debtors from failed neoliberal subjects to a group of European consumers whose rights have been infringed by banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ample evidence suggests that pain leads to additional demand in cognitive functioning, presumably due to its negative affective component and its propensity to capture attention. To highlight the role of motivational incentive, two experiments tested the combined effect of pain and monetary incentive on effort‐related cardiovascular response during cognitive performance. In both studies, healthy volunteers received individually adjusted painful or nonpainful thermal stimulations during a difficult cognitive task (4‐back task in Experiment 1; short‐term memory task in Experiment 2) and expected high (12 Swiss Francs in both experiments) or low monetary incentive (1 Swiss Franc in Experiment 1; 0.10 Swiss Francs in Experiment 2) for successful performance. Effort was primarily assessed as changes in cardiac pre‐ejection period (PEP). We predicted pain to increase subjective task difficulty during cognitive performance. Moreover, according to motivational intensity theory, we expected this to increase effort only when high effort was justified by high monetary incentive. Correspondingly, pain should lead to low effort (disengagement) when monetary incentive was low. Effort in the nonpainful conditions was expected to fall in between these conditions. The results of both studies support our predictions. Our findings provide the first evidence for the moderating effect of monetary incentive on physical pain's impact on effort‐related cardiovascular response. Accordingly, motivational incentives can counteract effort deficits associated with pain. The current findings further advance our understanding of pain's impact on effort‐related cardiovascular response by showing for the first time the moderating effect of monetary incentive. This suggests that it is possible to counteract effort deficits associated with pain, which may be beneficial from a clinical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reassessed the hedging properties of four major safe-haven currencies (US dollar, Swiss franc, euro, yen) in international stock portfolios covering most representative world macroeconomic areas. The main contribution to the existing literature is the emphasis on optimal hedging and asset-allocation strategies. A further distinguishing feature is an accurate comparison, inside a multivariate framework, between value-at-risk simulations assuming equal or optimal asset weights in hedged global stock portfolios. The US dollar stands out as the best safe-haven currency, while adding the US currency to single-hedged global stock portfolios including either the Swiss franc or the euro yields smooth risk profiles during major financial crises, and average risk indicators lower than that of a benchmark fully hedged portfolio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis on variability Bitcoin characteristics that help to quantitatively differentiate Bitcoin from the state-owned traditional currencies and the asset Gold. We provide a detailed study on returns of exchange rates—against the Swiss Franc—of several traditional currencies together with Bitcoin and Gold; for that purpose, we define a distance between currencies by means of the spectral densities of the ARMA models of the returns of the exchange rates, and we present the computed matrix of the distances between the chosen currencies. A statistical analysis of these matrix distances is further proposed, which shows that the distance between Bitcoin and any other currency or Gold is not comparable to any of the distances between currencies or between currencies and Gold and not involving Bitcoin. This result shows that Bitcoin is essentially different from the traditional currencies and from Gold, at least in what concerns the structure of its variance and auto-covariances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author focuses on Swiss franc debtors and how they are portrayed, and mentions relation between text and illustrations in anthropology. Topics discussed include emperical settings and informal conditions integral to formal litigation efforts of debtors, chances of depicting debtors that illustrates debt and social ramification in financialised economy, and beginning of mass contestation.

This paper analyzes the exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices for 85 categories of goods and services in Switzerland. The pass-through estimates are computed using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach that exploits the large Swiss franc appreciation that followed the unexpected removal of the Swiss franc-Euro floor in January 2015. The overall 1-year all-items pass-through is 0.12, which shows that the pass-through is highly incomplete. There is an important heterogeneity across product categories, where pass-through can be as high as 0.80. These variations are linked to the international trade characteristics of the products, as the prices of goods with a high degree of international tradability, with a high import share, or that depend on tourism are shown to be more sensitive to the exchange rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Scientific Proceedings of Ostroh Academy National University Series, Economics is the property of National University of Ostroh Academy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This is the first randomized trial to evaluate the efficacy of intraoperative cholangiography (IOC) and magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) in patients with suspected CBDS. This unblinded, multicenter RCT was conducted at five swiss hospitals. Eligibility criteria were suspected CBDS. Patients were randomized to IOC and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC), followed by endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) if needed, or MRCP followed by ERCP if needed, and LC. Primary outcome was length of stay (LOS), secondary outcomes were cost, stone detection, and complication rates. 122 Patients were randomised to the IOC Group (63) or the MRCP group (59). Median LOS for the IOC and the MRCP groups were 4 days IQR [3, 6] and [4, 6], with an estimated increase of LOS of 1.2 days in the MRCP group (p = 0.0799) in the linear model. Median cost in the IOC and MRCP groups were 10 473 Swiss Francs (CHF) and 10 801 CHF, respectively (p = 0.694). CBDS were found in 24 and 12 patients in the IOC and the MRCP groups, respectively (p = 0.0387). The complication rate did not differ between both groups. There is equipoise between both pathways. IOC has a significantly higher diagnostic yield than MRCP. Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT02351492: Radiological Investigation of Bile Duct Obstruction (RIBO). [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to explore whether the Turkish geopolitical uncertainty exhibits significant linkages with fluctuations in the Turkish lira (TRY) values against other currencies. The period examined covers the Erdoğan administration (March 2003 up to the present). The innovative geopolitical uncertainty index by Caldara and Iacoviello and modern GARCH methodologies are adopted in order to explore how geopolitical risk influences currency values and the overall economy during this turbulent period. Econometric outcomes reveal that geopolitical uncertainty leads to devaluation of TRY against the US dollar, the Swiss franc and the Swedish krona but in a non-significant manner whereas mixed results emerge concerning the impacts of macroeconomic or financial variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the potential use of electronic nicotine-delivery systems, or e-cigarettes, for smoking cessation, as suggested by the trial conducted by Auer et al. and discussed in the editorial by Rigotti. However, there are concerns that this approach might perpetuate nicotine addiction, as evidenced by observations in the trial.

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This paper proposes long-run estimates of ex ante real interest rates in Switzerland and other developed economies, and it describes their relative evolution. Our results highlight the decline in—and convergence of—global real interest rates that has unfolded over the last three decades for all maturities. While Swiss yields stand out as being particularly low and stable from a historical perspective, we find that Swiss interest rates have fallen less than in many other countries during the last decade. We then examine whether the reduction in the interest differential is related to a lower attractiveness of the Swiss franc. Focusing on the difference of Swiss minus German real government bonds yields, we find a significant increase in expected real depreciation of the Swiss franc and a somewhat lower convenience yield for Swiss bonds—the convenience yield reflecting the non-pecuniary value that investors impute to the liquidity of a given bond. In contrast, the safety premium in favor of the Swiss franc increased and therefore cannot explain the smaller decline in real interest rates in Switzerland. The last part of the paper analyzes the negative convenience yield on Swiss government bonds and its recent decline. We show that both the purchase of government bonds by foreign central banks and foreign exchange interventions by the Swiss National Bank may have contributed to this decline by reducing the relative supply of foreign versus domestic government bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimizing in local currency or in currency-adjusted expected returns depends on the portfolio base currency. Currency unhedged portfolios are more suitable for EUR-based investors and much less for CHF-based portfolios. The appreciation of the portfolio base currency represents a serious risk. Emerging market bond portfolios gain from the absence of currency risk when the portfolio base currency is the US dollar. The empirical results reveal that traditional models such as mean-variance optimization (MVO), minimum-variance optimization (MinVo), and Sharpe ratio optimizations are suitable for portfolio allocation, using both local currency and currency-adjusted expected bond returns as inputs in the optimizations. However, network- and centrality-based allocations outperform traditional models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models the foreign exchange intervention policy following the Rayleigh process derived from the standard flexible-price monetary framework. The exchange rate dynamics associated with the interventions are more sensitive to the change in the economic fundamental when a currency's money supply is ample and its appreciation expectation cannot be offset by lower interest rates that have fallen to the zero lower bound, suggesting that more intensive interventions are required to counteract currency appreciation pressure and resulting in foreign reserve accumulation. The empirical results using market data during January 2015–February 2020 demonstrate that the model can describe the dynamics of the Swiss franc exchange rate. The accumulation of foreign reserves through interventions is negatively co-integrated with the exchange rate volatility and the value of the mean level of the Swiss franc exchange rate in the dynamics, to some extent indicating a reasonably high degree of effectiveness of the Swiss National Bank's interventions. The transition between the target-zone and floating-rate regimes in 2015 caused changes in the level of exchange rate volatility but not its dynamical structure, suggesting that transitions between the floating-rate and target-zone regimes do not seem to have material consequence in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]