In & OUT

If you’re stuck in traffic in Los Angeles, you can at least tell yourself that it’s worse in Thailand, overall. Colombia and Indonesia tied for second-worst traffic, while the U.S. and Russia tied for fourth.

LA has been ranked the world’s most gridlocked city, topping Moscow and New York, but Thailand has been rated the most congested country. The rankings were released Monday by Inrix, a transportation analytics company.

But traffic data firm Inrix reports that it has a fresh way of measuring the worst traffic across the globe and that Los Angeles is not only America’s No. 1 but the world’s as well. Greater L.A.’s rank on the all-new Global Traffic Scorecard is based on the estimated time the average local motorist spent stuck in traffic during peak commuter hours in 2016.

The average of the Swiss working moms is the highest in Europe. According to a survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), about four out of five mothers were professionally active in 2015.

According to research, if the rate of working mothers in Switzerland is so high it is due to work-generalization; moreover, in special ranking part-time women, Switzerland ranks second among European nations behind the Netherlands.

Motherhood involves the abandonment of professional activity only in one case out of seven. However it provides a series of changes, including a sharp reduction in working hours, corresponding to a working day less per week.

Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, called on governments and businesses to do more to promote the same economic opportunities for men and women and to fight discrimination that interferes with those goals.

François Degeorge, professor at USI since 2003 and current director of the Institute of Finance at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, is the new Managing Director of the Swiss Finance Institute and succeeds Prof. Claudio Loderer, University of Bern.

Switzerland, Germany and Austria confirmed at the top of the rankings, according to Young Workers Index, research carried out by PwC, which since 2006 analyzes the level of employment, schooling and vocational training of young people between 15 and 24 years of the 35 OECD countries.

In general, Europe is at the top of the rankings, as the leading trio is followed by Iceland, Norway and Denmark. Israel, Luxembourg and Germany have instead registered the best progress in the period 2006-2015, whereas Southern Europe, particularly Italy, Spain and Greece, are earnestly striving to recover after the financial crisis.

The Nobel prize for economics in 2016 was awarded to Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström, for the "contract theory" developed by the two U.S.-based economists.Their studies have mapped out an overall framework to understand agreements like insurance contracts, employer-employee relationships and property rights.

The top managers of Swiss companies are the best paid in Europe. The average value of wages received last year by the leaders of the seven Swiss companies included among the 100 largest European amounted to 8.77 million euro.

Compared to 2014 there has been an increase of almost 15%, according to research published today by the Willis Towers Watson consulting. Behind the Swiss, Spaniards rank with 7.18 million euro, then the British (6.78) and the Germans (5).

The labor market should remain stable in Switzerland in the next three months. It is the result of the analysis carried out by Manpower, according to which more than nine out of ten employers do not provide for changes in the number of jobs in the fourth quarter of 2016. Only 4 % are expecting to increase their staffing levels, while 3 % are anticipating a reduction.

“This relatively stable-but subdued-forecast may be due in part to the UK’s vote for Brexit, which is exacerbating political uncertainty and bringing the risk that the Swiss franc may rise further against the euro," noted Herbert Beuchat, interim director Manpower Switzerland, quoted in a statement.