Search Results
Journal Article
Real output in Switzerland: new estimates for 1914-47
In this article, Felix A, Andrist, Richard G. Anderson, and Marcela Williams provide, for the first time, an estimate of the real gross domestic product of Switzerland between 1914 and 1947. The estimate is obtained from published data on three other measures of Swiss economic activity during this period: net national product, industrial production, and the transport volume of Swiss railroads. These underlying series closely represent the economic growth of Switzerland; but, they also seem unreasonably volatile as proxy measures of total production, and hence, are filtered by moving averages. ...
Report
Disciplined discretion: the German and Swiss monetary targeting frameworks in operation
Many observers have held up the records of price stability in Germany and in Switzerland as examples of the benefits of a monetary targeting regime. These claims have been juxtaposed in recent years with econometric analyses of Bundesbank policy which have shown an absence of dependable relationship between money growth, inflation, and policy movements. We offer an analysis of actual Bundesbank and Swiss National Bank monetary policy as it operated which explains this puzzling gap between performance and presumed policy. We confirm that neither country is a monetary targeter according to a ...
Journal Article
International liquidity provision during the financial crisis: a view from Switzerland
The authors document the provision of liquidity in Swiss francs (CHF) by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to banks located outside Switzerland during the recent financial crisis. What makes the Swiss case special is the size of this liquidity provision?at times, 80 percent of all short-term CHF liquidity provided by the SNB?and the measures adopted to distribute this liquidity. In addition to making CHF available to other central banks via swap facilities, the SNB also allows banks outside Switzerland to directly participate in its repurchase agreement transactions. Although this policy was ...
Conference Paper
Interest rate operating procedures of foreign central banks
Working Paper
Ireland and Switzerland: the jagged edges of the Great Inflation
Ireland and Switzerland both had rising inflation during the early 1970s, but their experiences diverged thereafter, so that they form a rare example of two countries whose inflation rates are poorly correlated with one another over the Great Inflation period. In addition, each of the two countries' records is anomalous in important respects relative to other economies' 1970s inflations. This paper proposes that the monetary policy neglect hypothesis can account for the anomalies, providing a consistent explanation for the Great Inflation across countries. Extensive archival evidence is ...