Switzerland's system of free trade agreements: Assessing the impact on imported goods

Philipp Imhof

Aussenwirtschaft, 2021, vol. 71, issue 01, 35-72

Abstract: In this paper, I estimate the aggregated ex-post effect of Switzerland's free trade agreements on the prospects for imported goods and quantify the implied consumer benefits. Applying a differencein- difference approach to highly disaggregated import data, I find no effects on the quality and variety dimensions but a significant reduction of 8.41% in quality-adjusted prices. Using the share of imports in consumer expenditure, I calculate an average consumer price reduction of 1.43%. The price reduction implies a positive consumer gain. However, I perform a pre-trend test to validate the required parallel trend assumption and document a potential underestimation of the actual effect on consumer gains.

Keywords: Switzerland; free trade agreements; imports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
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