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The Sources and Magnitudes of Switzerland’s Gains from Trade

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 152, pages 1–21 (2016)Cite this article

Summary

This paper uses the modern workhorse model of quantitative trade theory (Eaton and Kortum, 2002) as a measurement tool to quantify Switzerland’s gains from trade. I find that individual trading partners matter surprisingly little for Switzerland’s welfare because of reallocation effects: if trade between Switzerland and some partner country is inhibited, other supplier countries step into the breach so that the losses are limited and typically amount to less than 1 %. The conclusions are different if one considers groups of countries such as for example the EU: participating in a multilateral 25 % trade cost reduction increases Swiss welfare by 11 % relative to the status quo. However, it must also be noted that in the case of non-participation, the actual welfare losses relative to the status quo are modest with less than 1 %.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss National Bank, Boersenstrasse 15, 8022, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christian Hepenstrick

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  1. Christian Hepenstrick
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Correspondence to Christian Hepenstrick.

Additional information

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Swiss National Bank. I thank Philippe Ruh and Claudia Bernasconi for very helpful comments and discussions. I am also grateful to the editors and an anonymous referee for their careful reading of the paper and help to improve it.

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Hepenstrick, C. The Sources and Magnitudes of Switzerland’s Gains from Trade. Swiss J Economics Statistics 152, 1–21 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399420

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399420

JEL-Classification

  • F10
  • F11
  • F14

Keywords

  • Gains from trade
  • Switzerland
  • development accounting