This paper analyses the determinants of firm participation in the Swiss COVID-19 loan programme, which aims to bridge firms’ liquidity shortfalls that have resulted from the pandemic. State-guaranteed COVID-19 loans are widely used by Swiss firms, with 20% of all firms participating, resulting...

Based on a vector autoregressive model, this paper shows that time variation in monthly excess returns on Swiss government bonds and stocks is predominantly driven by news of inflation and dividends, respectively. This finding is in marked contrast to US evidence which points to a more prominent...

Based on a vector autoregressive model (VAR), this paper shows that time variation in monthly excess returns on Swiss government bonds and stocks is predominantly driven by news of inflation and dividends, respectively. This finding is in marked contrast to US evidence which points to a more...

Bonds of Swiss non-government borrowers offered higher daily excess returns ("alphas") than suggested by their sensitivities to standard risk factors over the sample period from 2007 to 2014. By contrast, comparable bonds (same currency denomination and credit rating category) issued by foreign...

We analyse spillovers from European Central Bank (ECB) policy sur-prises to asset markets outside the euro area using Switzerland as a case study. Our results suggest that Swiss asset price responses to ECB policy surprises are significant. They depend on the type and nature of the surprise and...

This paper studies the ability of external imbalances to indicate subsequent exchange rate returns. We propose a simple twist of the Gourinchas and Rey (2007) approximation to the intertemporal budget constraint which is valid for countries that are net creditors (or net debtors) consistently...