A sudden change in monetary policy happened in Switzerland on January 15th, 2015. The Swiss National Bank removed a lower exchange rate bound vis-à-vis the Euro. This unexpected change of regime induced a temporary uncertainty about future prices in foreign markets. We believe that this hampers...

A sudden change in monetary policy happened in Switzerland on January 15th, 2015. The Swiss National Bank removed a lower exchange rate bound vis-à-vis the Euro. This unexpected change of regime induced a temporary uncertainty about future prices in foreign markets. We believe that this hampers...

Business Tendency Surveys (BTS) continue to be an important source of timely information on business cycles in many countries. We address quality of economic survey data by uncovering the relation between unit non-response and participant characteristics on company respectively respondent level....

Does increased policy uncertainty dampen investment plans of firms? We provide direct evidence on this question by examining the effects of an unexpectedly accepted and farreaching referendum in Switzerland in February 2014. The vote has put several economically relevant agreements between...

In Switzerland a sudden policy uncertainty shock happened in February 2014 with the close and largely unexpected acceptance of a referendum aiming at limiting free movement of persons. The referendum requires Switzerland to reintroduce annual quotas for immigrants within three years. The...

Durch Bereitstellung von Krediten tragen Banken zur Transformation von Finanzkapital in Sachkapital bei. Die Kreditvergabepolitik der Schweizer Banken hat sich im vergangenen Vierteljahrhundert stark gewandelt. Basierend auf einem Datensatz (1987-2012) mit bankengruppenspezifischen Bilanzdaten...

Does increased policy uncertainty dampen investment plans of firms? We provide direct evidence on this question by examining the effects of an unexpectedly accepted and farreaching referendum in Switzerland in February 2014. The vote has put several economically relevant agreements between...

This text presents the economic forecast conducted by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at the ETH Zurich as published on 26 March 2013. After an introduction describing the current situation and crucial assumptions underlying the forecast, we summarise the key results for Switzerland. Then we...