A neoclassical perspective on Switzerland's 1990s stagnation
Yannic Stucki and Jacqueline Thomet
Issue
2020-22
Pages
43
JEL classification
E13, E20, E32, E65
Keywords
Business cycle accounting, housing crises, stagnation, Switzerland
Year
2020
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%.