Swiss trade during the COVID-19 pandemic: an early appraisal

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

Table 3 Correlates of Swiss import flows between January and June 2020

% Change in imports compared to 2019	Monthly data					Quarterly data
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)
Purchasing Manager	4.62 ⁺				4.22	6.93				6.67
Index (in SD)	(2.65)				(2.80)	(4.60)				(4.66)
Covid-19 cases		− 2.08		− 1.55	− 1.55		− 1.08 ⁺		− 0.84	− 2.65
per 1000 people		(1.38)		(1.40)	(6.58)		(0.62)		(0.60)	(2.86)
Stringency index			− 0.33 ^∗	− 0.30 ^∗	− 0.12			− 0.49 ^∗	− 0.45 ^∗	− 0.15
countermeasures			(0.12)	(0.12)	(0.13)			(0.20)	(0.19)	(0.17)
R²	0.14	0.09	0.10	0.10	0.15	0.11	0.05	0.07	0.08	0.15
Trading partners	28	55	55	55	28	28	55	55	55	28
Observations	164	300	300	300	164	56	110	110	110	56

Notes: The dependent variable is the percentage change in monthly (col. 1–5) or quarterly (col. 6–10) imports compared to 2019. All models include time period fixed effects. Covid-19 cases per 1000 people denotes the increase in a country’s confirmed Covid-19 cases per 1000 inhabitants during that month/quarter. Stringency index countermeasures represents the average stringency score of a country during that month/quarter taking values between 0 (no measures) and 100 (maximum stringency). The Purchasing Manager Index represents the monthly/quarterly standardized deviation from the long-term mean in managers’ confidence. We restrict the sample to countries with a minimum annual trade value of 500 million CHF and a monthly trade value of at least 25 million CHF in 2019. Descriptive statistics are reported in Table 5 in the Appendix. Standard errors (in parentheses) are clustered by trading partners. ⁺p <0.10, *p <0.05, **p <0.01