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The purpose of this article is to provide empirical evidence about the potential positive effects of switching from given non-reciprocal trade preferences granted under the Swiss Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) for developing countries (DCs) to negotiated reciprocal trade preferences under a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

In a case study of Tunisia’s exports to Switzerland, the authors apply methods of matching econometrics, namely, Propensity-Score Matching and Nearest-Neighbor Matching. Hereby, they are able to identify the average treatment effect on the treated.

Overall preferential exports increased by 125 per cent after the entry into force of the FTA in 2005 until the end of the observation period in 2011. Additionally, an analysis of the agro-food and textile sectors likewise indicate boosting preferential exports in the amount of 100 per cent.

Case studies in this vein have their disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the lack of generalization. In contrast to studies estimating the potential effects of an FTA for several countries, the authors are not able to generalize their results based on a single case.

Because trade preferences under the Swiss GSP are offered to the country group of DCs as a whole, non-reciprocal trade preferences are not tailored to the export structure of a particular DC. By switching from non-reciprocal to negotiated reciprocal trade preferences, DCs such as Tunisia expect to negotiate terms which are tailored to their export structure as well as better conditions than competitors from countries which are still beneficiaries of the GSP.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate explicitly the switch from non-reciprocal to reciprocal trade preferences using econometric matching techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if the institutional quality of developing countries (DCs) and least-developed countries (LDCs) contributes to a significant increase in the utilization rate of the Swiss generalized system of preferences in the agro-food sector.

The authors use state of the art regression techniques accounting for zero values to identify if the institutional quality – separately depicted by the Worldwide Governance Indicators, the Index of Economic Freedom and the Human Development Index – can contribute in overcoming non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade.

The institutional quality exerts a consistent positive effect on the level of utilization of trade preferences.

Swiss food trade represents, of course, only a very small share of world trade, therefore it would be worthwhile to extend the analysis to other countries and sectors.

Industrialized countries’ development policies should more strongly focus on capacity building in DCs and LDCs to strengthen trade-related institutions.

The study focuses on an often underemphasized element in international trade relations – the role of the institutional quality in overcoming NTBs to trade.

The purpose of this paper is to compare competing adaptive strategies for fast frequency sweeps for driven and waveguide‐mode problems and give recommendations for practical implementations.

The paper first summarizes the theory of adaptive strategies for multi‐point (MP) sweeps and then evaluates the efficiency of such methods by means of numerical examples.

The authors' numerical tests give clear evidence for exponential convergence. In the driven case, highly resonant structures lead to pronounced pre‐asymptotic regions, followed by almost immediate convergence. Bisection and greedy point‐placement methods behave similarly. Incremental indicators are trivial to implement and perform similarly well as residual‐based methods.

While the underlying reduction methods can be extended to any kind of affine parameter‐dependence, the numerical tests of this paper are for polynomial parameter‐dependence only.

The present paper describes self‐adaptive point‐placement methods and termination criteria to make MP frequency sweeps more efficient and fully automatic.

The paper provides a self‐adaptive strategy that is efficient and easy to implement. Moreover, it demonstrates that exponential convergence rates can be reached in practice.

Communication studies have expanded significantly around the globe in the last decades. Due to new channels of communication and more and more mediatised societies, the role of communication has gained significance. In contrast, communication does not seem to be a topic of high priority for many corporate leaders. They often still value communication as a mere support function.

This chapter explores communication courses of business schools in the United States and Europe. It is hypothesised that only if communication courses are recognised in such programmes the profession of business communicators will realise entry into the highest levels of corporate decision-making.

The main question is how far top-ranked Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes integrate communication courses. This is investigated via website analysis and interviews. This chapter also provides explanations for the current status quo. The results will be of interest to all those responsible for shaping MBA curricula and give insights into how the communication discipline is viewed by leaders of business schools.

The purpose of this paper is to identify those product characteristics that are of importance to consumers of organic food in Switzerland.

In order to identify important organic product characteristics, this study applies a Generalized Linear Model using a six-year sample of Swiss household data distinguishing between organic and conventional products at the product level.

The analysis reveals three product-related dimensions of importance. First, Swiss consumers prefer unprocessed organic products over highly processed ones suggesting that communicating potential benefits of organic food is more promising for unprocessed products. Second, organic consumers are reluctant to buy products with high price premiums. Third, Swiss consumers prefer domestically produced organic products over imported ones.

The results imply that supporting organic agriculture in Switzerland is still promising from a policy and a marketing perspective as long as the organic price premium is not too high.

This paper presents results regarding the determinants of the organic market share in Switzerland. They give a first understanding of which product characteristics determine organic market shares. From a policy as well as from a marketing perspective a further investigation at the household level is promising in order to understand and respond to the needs and expectations of Swiss consumers.

Single-family houses are a common form of housing in Europe. Most were built in the context of the suburbanization after World War II and are now facing challenges arising from generational changes as well as increasing living and energy standards. According to the hypothesis of this paper, in several EU regions, single-family houses may face future challenges arising from oversupply and lack of adaptation to current demand. To examine this, the paper analyses the present situation and discusses the prognosis for the challenges described above regarding the three neighbouring north-western European countries Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, based on available data and a review of country-specific characteristics of housing markets as well as national policies. Despite an impending mismatch between demand and supply, planning policies still support the emergence of new single-family houses. The comparison of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands shows the growing polarization between shrinking and growing regions and central and peripheral sites apparent at different stages in the three countries. While a high rate of vacancies is already registered for some regions in Germany, in the Netherlands this phenomenon can only be seen near the borders and in villages within the Randstad conurbation. In Belgium also, this phenomenon is not yet widespread, but in some suburban neighbourhoods dating from the 1950's and 1960's more and more single-family houses are becoming more difficult to sell, indicating an emerging mismatch between supply and demand. This article proposes some instruments which enable municipalities to intervene in single family housing neighbourhoods which are largely dominated by private ownership. These instruments are not yet widely established in single-family housing neighbourhoods but that may become important in the future.