Überlegungen zur Gewinnausschüttung der Schweizerischen Nationalbank

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) currently holds reserves of more than 40 billion CHF. In the future she wishes to increase her reserves by about 1 billion CHF per year. The new law on the SNB must be used to make the SNB behave according to the same standards as other national banks. Her reserves should be limited to 30 billion CHF, which would still make her the richest central bank in the world. Almost all her future profits should be distributed. To improve her incentives to pursue a responsible investment strategy, her profits should be calculated using only her flow income and expenditures. She should cover capital losses from her reserves

L'abolition des monopoles d'assurances immobilières en Allemagne: Leçons pour la Suisse

We study, what Switzerland can learn from the disappearance of the property insurance monopolies in Germany. We show that the German insurance monopolies did not fight hard enough to defend their interests. a) Most of them knew that they would be bought up by another public insurance company. The monopoly was not for them a question of survival. b) The German monopolies did not have their own interest group. They were defended by the Association of Public Insurers. This association has much wider interests to defend than just the monopolies in the property insurance market. c) For the small customer the disappearance of the state monopolies was a painful event. Within five years their premium rates rose by about 50%, and the contributions paid by the insurance companies for fire prevention fell massively. It is well known, however, that consumers do not constitute a powerful pressure group

Bases économiques pour une loi sur la protection des locataires

Le droit suisse du logement ne fait pas la différence entre les taux d'intérêt nominaux et les taux d'intérêt réels. Il en résulte une forte sur-indexation des loyers en périodes de taux d'inflation élevés. En raison de cette lacune conceptuelle de la loi sur la protection des locataires, ces derniers ont payé environ 9 milliards de francs de loyers en trop durant la période 1990-1996. Le moyen le plus simple de résoudre ce problème serait de détacher les loyers du taux d'intérêt hypothécaire, et permettre une indexation intégrale des loyers. Pour des raisons macro-économiques, il serait souhaitable d'échelonner cette indexation sur plusieurs années

Symmetric mixed states of nn qubits: local unitary stabilizers and entanglement classes

We classify, up to local unitary equivalence, local unitary stabilizer Lie algebras for symmetric mixed states into six classes. These include the stabilizer types of the Werner states, the GHZ state and its generalizations, and Dicke states. For all but the zero algebra, we classify entanglement types (local unitary equivalence classes) of symmetric mixed states that have those stabilizers. We make use of the identification of symmetric density matrices with polynomials in three variables with real coefficients and apply the representation theory of SO(3) on this space of polynomials.Comment: 10 pages, 1 table, title change and minor clarifications for published versio

La proposition du Conseil fédéral pour le nouveau droit du bail à loyer: une analyse économique

This paper critically analyses the proposed law for regulating the rental housing market. The swiss tenants have made mostly negative experiences with the rate of return regulation practiced in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, the new law does not address these problems. If the new proposed law were to be enacted, it would probably lead to a significant rise in real rents in the near future. The shortcomings of the proposal are such that it has to be completely revised. We advocate a laissez-faire solution for the contracting of new leases combined with indexation on the CPI for on-going leases. Such a measure would permit a market evolution satisfying both landlords and tenants

Benchmarks of the full configuration interaction, Monte Carlo shell model, and no-core full configuration methods

We report no-core solutions for properties of light nuclei with three different approaches in order to assess the accuracy and convergence rates of each method. Full configuration interaction (FCI), Monte Carlo shell model (MCSM) and no core full configuration (NCFC) approaches are solved separately for the ground state energy and other properties of seven light nuclei using the realistic JISP16 nucleon-nucleon interaction. The results are consistent among the different approaches. The methods differ significantly in how the required computational resources scale with increasing particle number for a given accuracy.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, 6 table

A Toolkit of Engineered Recombinational Balancers in C. elegans

Dejima and colleagues report using CRISPR/Cas9 to generate a new collection of greatly improved balancer chromosomes in the standard laboratory nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, using methods previously reported by the same laboratory, expanding the set of C. elegans balancers to cover nearly 90% of coding genes

Der Bericht der Expertengruppe: "Reform der Währungsordnung". Eine kritische Würdigung

The proposed new law for the Swiss National Bank attempts to establish the SNB as an entity, which is practically uncontrolled by the democratic institutions of our country. The proposal has to be fundamentally remodelled, taking into account the following principles: The more independence the SNB has, the stricter should be the rules on transparency and accountability. Decisions having a direct effect on the tax burden of the citizen cannot be left to the discretion of the SNB. The SNB's excess reserves should be reduced by a one shot transfer of ca. 20 billion francs. In future the SNB should distribute most of its profits (roughly 4 billion francs per year), rather than increase its already excessive stock of foreign exchange reserves

Seeing beyond negotiations: the impacts of the Belt and Road on Sino-Kazakh transboundary water management

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and infrastructural development has led to growing concerns regarding the future of Central Asia’s water resources. However, few attempts have been made to assess the impacts this will have on specific transboundary basins within the region. This article explores how the context of the BRI transcends its physical impacts within the Ili and Irtysh basins, creating a sanctioned discourse that forecloses the possibility of ‘successful’ negotiations at an official level. As such, pathways to transboundary water management that exist beyond the negotiations are shown to have greater plausibility and potential effectiveness.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Herd It in the Gobi: Deserting pastoralism?

Global drylands host more than USD 1 trillion in resource extraction investments, which serve to reconfigure communities and landscapes. In Mongolia’s Gobi Desert mega-mining brings social challenges and environmental changes that question if nomadic herding and mining can coexist. Whilst company and community conflict are common, nascent frameworks and mediation models suggest alternate ways to resolve the mining–community conundrum. Here we investigate environmental transformations that herders encounter in the presence of the Oyu Tolgoi mega-mine in Mongolia’s Khanbogd soum (district). Using socio-economic and physical data collected through interviews, field studies and climate records, we assessed local engagement and adaptation to largescale mining. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods enabled us to examine the implications of mining for herder lives and lands in an integrated way. This study presents a holistic assessment of the roles of herders, governments and mines in reshaping pastoralism. In our chosen case study, we find that—contrary to common narratives—mining and herding can, and do, coexist in Khanbogd soum, though ongoing challenges exist which deserve critical attention.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio