Swiss Trade During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Early Appraisal

Stefan Legge ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Philipp Wegmueller

Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED

Abstract: This study uses trade data from Switzerland's Federal Customs Administration to examine the impact of COVID-19 on international goods trade between January and July 2020. We show that Swiss trade during that period fell by 11% compared to 2019, and that the contraction following the Federal Lockdown in mid-March was considerably steeper than the Swiss trade collapse in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008. Exploiting country variation in the spread of COVID-19, the stringency of containment measures, and Swiss trade flows, we document that the pandemic adversely affected both the demand and supply side of foreign trade. We discuss several channels at work and show that our COVID-19 measures are correlated with country-specific consumer and producer confidence series, which explain considerable heterogeneity in the observed trade dynamics.

Keywords: COVID-19; Trade; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 F14 H12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-isf and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.vwiit.ch/cred/CREDResearchPaper30.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Swiss trade during the COVID-19 pandemic: an early appraisal (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rdv:wpaper:credresearchpaper30

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Franz Koelliker ().