Faculty of Business and Economics
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Faculty of Business and Economics

Projects & Collaborations

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Enhancing palliative care in intensive care units (EPIC) - Horizon Europe

Umbrella Project  | 2 Project Members

Palliative care (PC) in ICU


About 10% of all decedents in the population die after admission to an intensive care unit (ICU). These patients often have distressing symptoms and may receive more intense life-prolonging treatment than they would have chosen, their family members often experience lasting distress from the experience and many ICU physicians and nurses are burdened by their perception of potentially non-beneficial care.


The EPIC project aims to sustainably improve palliative care for critically ill patients and their families in the ICU. An interdisciplinary consortium collaborates to provide a novel harmonized palliative care practice model using telemedicine. The project is the first European interventional study on palliative care in the ICU, using a systems-based approach with proactive patient identification, checklist and blended learning targeted to specific requirements of ICU clinicians. Effectiveness of the new model is assessed through a stepped wedge randomized trial with 7 clinical centers from 5 European countries, 23 multi-disciplinary ICUs and enrolment of 2001 patients. Primary outcome is a reduction in ICU stay to relieve suffering. Cost implications and cost effectiveness will be assessed from different perspectives. An evidence-based patient decision aid for critically ill patients is developed. Additional outcomes serve deepen our understanding of barriers and facilitators and provide ethical recommendations for the use of telepalliative care in civic society.


The vision of EPIC is to contribute to a mind shift from a narrow focus on prolonging life towards more holistic care. A European patient and family advisory group is implemented to engage patients and family members from the start and co-create open-access information to increase acceptance of palliative care. Telemedicine offers a low-cost solution to spread the model to all regions in Europe and open new avenues for patient-centered care.

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EUCOR Seed Money - LIFT - Territorial strategies of Foundations in the Upper Rhine territories (Levier d'Intervention des Fondations sur les Territoires)

Research Project  | 1 Project Members

Das Projekt LIFT aus dem Bereich der Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften zielt darauf ab, Wissen über Stiftungen und ihre Aktivitäten in der Oberrheinregion auszutauschen. Ziel ist es, mithilfe eines multidisziplinären Ansatzes die Strategien von Stiftungen und ihre Interaktionen mit den Akteuren und Behörden vor Ort zu identifizieren. Die wichtigsten zu erwartenden Ergebnisse sind die Schaffung einer Datenbank über die Stiftungen am Oberrhein sowie die Vorbereitung eines gemeinsamen Interreg-Projektes mit Forschenden und regionalen Partnerinnen und Partnern im Jahr 2025. Das Projekt steht unter der Leitung der Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) und wird in Kooperation mit den Universitäten Basel, Freiburg, Straßburg sowie dem KIT umgesetzt. Eucor - The European Campus unterstützt das Konsortium mit dem Seed Money-Förderinstrument in der Förderlinie "Forschung und Innovation".

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Shock Transmission and Welfare Effects in Global Production Networks

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

Most firms engaged in international trade are part of a production network, being a seller and buyer of several products at the same time. These linkages between firms within and across borders expose firms to uncertainty, both directly via their immediate customers and suppliers, and indirectly via their customers' and suppliers' networks of business partners. Importantly, such networks imply heterogeneous responses of firms to upstream or downstream disruptions that depend on the exact structure of their individual value chains. In this project, we empirically study the role of international production networks for the propagation of shocks and the implications for firm behaviour and welfare.In a first part of this research agenda, we will focus on how a firm's reaction to an aggregate shock depends on its international network structure. Using confidential Swiss customs data, proprietary firm data, and a reduced-form event study approach, we will examine the impact of a sudden appreciation of the Swiss Franc in January 2015 on how firms adjusted their export prices (pass-through), quantities, and the average quality of goods exported. The exposure, the extent and the margin of response of any given Swiss exporting firm depends on specific features of its production network, that is, on the share of imported intermediate inputs and on the currency of invoicing of these imports and of their exports. Accordingly, we will study (1) the implications of heterogeneity due to this direct exposure and the interaction between invoicing and a firm's import/export structure. In addition, we measure indirect exposure to the exchange rate shock by means of international and domestic input-output tables to analyse (2) whether indirect exposure to the shock via production networks was quantitatively important.In a second part of the research agenda, we will focus on the propagation of local shocks through the production network. To do so, we rely on a difference-in-differences design where we exploit the staggered introduction of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic over time and space, starting January 2020 in China and followed by lockdowns in Italy and then in northern European countries. These lockdowns led to disruptions of supply chains from the perspective of Swiss firms in the period before Switzerland implemented a partial lockdown itself. Using the same database as above, we study (1) how Swiss companies adjusted their trade flows with existing buyers and suppliers, (2) to what extent they substituted from business partners with local disruptions toward those that were unaffected, and (3) how firm performance was impacted given the modified production network.The results we expect from this research are highly relevant for the literature on supply networks in international macroeconomics. We will also tie together this literature on production networks with the recent literature that highlights the important role of currency choice. It will furthermore deepen our understanding of the effects of the pandemic in a globalised world. In the process, we will also construct a database on transaction-level trade flows that includes firm characteristics and firm balance sheets. We will make all codes and documentation freely available to other researchers who will benefit from reduced start-up costs.

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The Political Economy of Coal Policy: Comparative Analyses of Stakeholder Strategies and Resource Industries' Embeddedness in the International Economy

Research Project  | 1 Project Members

Discontinuation policies such as phase-out of coal must be considered for low-carbon transitions. Yet a phase-out policy as a way to destabilize incumbent socio-technical regimes has drawn limited attention, unlike "phase-in" of clean technologies. Coal is still a major energy supply and largest source of CO 2 emissions in many countries. We conduct a comparative case study to investigate why some jurisdictions covered more ground in coal phase-out while others failed to bring it even on the political agenda. Since phase-out policies are especially prone to political contestations, we focus on actors influencing national energy policies, their interests and agency to explain the different trajectories across cases with respect to coal phase-out. This project focuses on in-depth analyses of 4 cases; Alberta (Canada), Australia, Germany and Japan. They are all large CO 2 emitters, but their coal phase-out trajectories are diverse. Their trajectories display counter- evident patterns to theory-driven expectations in political economy and transition research, given their coal production and trade profile. To explain this gap, we adapt an interdisciplinary approach in analyzing the evolution of discourses, actors' resource endowments and their practices. We employ mixed methods consisting of surveys, document analysis and semi-structured interviews, followed both by qualitative and quantitative analyses. A comparative analysis contributes to theory-building in enactment of phase-out policies and the role of agency in destabilization of socio-technical regimes. The project will yield practically relevant insights for transition forerunners and policymakers in developing strategies for disrupting path- dependency of unsustainable technologies hindering low-carbon transitions.

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FV-90 The importance and Characteristics of Patent for Innovation in the Chemica-Pharmaceutical Industry

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

With this research project, we want to investigate the effects of intellectual property protection on the pace of innovation in Swiss pharmaceutical and related industries. More specifically, we are interested in finding out the impact of patents and their characteristics on the process of innovation in the respective parent industry as well as in other related technological fields and industries. The gained insights may help us to understand better (1) the conflicting positions among current stakeholders of the pharmaceutical industry regarding patent protection, R&D and innovation and (2) the alleged significance of the lack of patent protection for the emergence of the Swiss chemical-pharmaceutical industry at the end of the 19 th century.

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In Search of Decoupling: (How) Can We Combine Climate Sustainability with Economic Growth, Good Jobs, and Public Preferences?

Research Project  | 1 Project Members

Whether economic growth inevitably increases greenhouse gas emissions may be the most contentious issue within the climate research and environmental communities. Some are optimistic about opportunities for "green growth" and new jobs in less polluting industries; others reject that emissions can be sustainably "decoupled" from growth. This open question is one important reason for policymakers' slow decision-making about how to address the challenge of climate change. Given this debate, and the urgent need for politically feasible policies that are both effective and economical, we propose a three-part program to better illuminate the relationship between growth and emissions. First, we will investigate prior changes in countries' emissions, and the political and socioeconomic factors behind them. Using statistical models, we will compare emissions from different sources, and focus in particular on the impacts of public attitudes and the relative sizes of different industries. Second, we will qualitatively examine in-depth the cases of countries that have most decoupled economic growth from various sources of emissions. Under what conditions have these achievements, including key policy decisions, been possible? Third, we will investigate what people believe to be key policies' impacts on growth and employment. How do those beliefs shape preferences with respect to climate policies, and how closely do they match the actual track records of existing policies?