A neoclassical perspective on Switzerland's 1990s stagnation

No 2020-22, Working Papers from Swiss National Bank

Abstract: We study Switzerland's weak growth during the 1990s through the lens of the business cycle accounting framework of Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan (2007). Our main result is that weak productivity growth cannot account for the stagnation experienced during that time. Rather, the stagnation is explained by factors that made labour and investment expensive. We show that increased labour income taxes and financial frictions are plausible causes. Holding these factors constant, the counterfactual annualized real output growth over the 1992Q2-1996Q4 period is 1.93% compared to realized growth of 0.35%.

Keywords: Business cycle accounting; housing crises; stagnation; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 E20 E32 E65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-fdg, nep-his and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: A neoclassical perspective on Switzerland’s 1990s stagnation (2021)
Working Paper: A neoclassical perspective on Switzerland s 1990s stagnation (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2020-22

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