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SJES Special Focus on Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic presents a great challenge for health policy, but also for economic policy more broadly. The only remedy so far has involved confinement of substantial parts of the population to ensure appropriate levels of social distance. These necessary measures carry a substantial economic cost, with early data showing an unprecedented contraction in economic activity.

New Content ItemIn these massively changing times, economists can contribute to shaping the debate. The Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics has prepared a collection of submissions that analyze the disease and its impact on the economic and health situation, propose ways to mitigate economic consequences, or discuss ways to return to normal life, among others.

Lead Editor: Cédric Tille

Edited by: Monika Buetler, Ugo Panizza, Urban Jerman, Guido Kuersteiner



  1. We study the interplay of non-pharmaceutical containment measures, human behavior, and the spread of COVID-19 in Switzerland. First, we collect sub-national data and construct indices that capture the stringen...

    Authors: Regina Pleninger, Sina Streicher and Jan-Egbert Sturm
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2022 158:5
  2. This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on household income in Austria, using detailed administrative labor market data, in combination with micro-simulation techniques that enable specific labor...

    Authors: Michael Christl, Silvia De Poli, Dénes Kucsera and Hanno Lorenz
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2022 158:4
  3. This paper empirically examines the economic effects of COVID-19 vaccine rollouts using a cross-country daily database of vaccinations and high-frequency indicators of economic activity—nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emi...

    Authors: Pragyan Deb, Davide Furceri, Daniel Jimenez, Siddharth Kothari, Jonathan D. Ostry and Nour Tawk
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2022 158:3
  4. Even though the recession in Switzerland triggered by COVID-19 ultimately remained without consequences for the apprenticeship market, significantly fewer apprenticeship contracts had been signed in the months...

    Authors: Daniel Goller and Stefan C. Wolter
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2021 157:6
  5. 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 peri...

    Authors: Konstantin Büchel, Stefan Legge, Vincent Pochon and Philipp Wegmüller
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:22
  6. Using online data for prices and real-time debit card transaction data on changes in expenditures for Switzerland allows us to track inflation on a daily basis. While the daily price index fluctuates around th...

    Authors: Santiago E. Alvarez and Sarah M. Lein
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:18
  7. The mutual funds’ returns, inter alia, are dependent on fund managers’ performance. This makes human capital efficiency very central for consistent risk-adjusted performance. The persistence in performance bec...

    Authors: Nawazish Mirza, Jamila Abaidi Hasnaoui, Bushra Naqvi and Syed Kumail Abbas Rizvi
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:16
  8. We analyse small businesses’ recourse to public support measures during the COVID-19 crisis using a survey of 1011 self-employed workers and small business owners in Switzerland. We find that “objective” measu...

    Authors: Marius Brülhart, Rafael Lalive, Tobias Lehmann and Michael Siegenthaler
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:15
  9. This paper analyzes card payments to the retail sector in Switzerland during the COVID-19 crisis. We provide evidence on aggregate effects and regional shifts. Pronounced shifts—which persisted post-lockdown—c...

    Authors: Sébastien Kraenzlin, Christoph Meyer and Thomas Nellen
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:14
  10. The number of short-time workers from January to April 2020 is used to now- and forecast quarterly GDP growth. We purge the monthly log level series from the systematic component to extract unexpected changes ...

    Authors: Sylvia Kaufmann
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:12
  11. Like most countries, the Swiss government adopted drastic measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus. These measures were aimed at avoiding close physical proximity between people. The adverse economic con...

    Authors: Marius Faber, Andrea Ghisletta and Kurt Schmidheiny
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:11
  12. We assess the impact of the timing of lockdown measures implemented in Germany and Switzerland on cumulative COVID-19-related hospitalization and death rates. Our analysis exploits the fact that the epidemic w...

    Authors: Martin Huber and Henrika Langen
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:10
  13. The partial shutdown of the economy following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the lack of measurements of economic activity that are available with a short lag and at high frequency. The ...

    Authors: Yvan Lengwiler
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:7
  14. Because macroeconomic data is published with a substantial delay, assessing the health of the economy during the rapidly evolving COVID-19 crisis is challenging. We develop a fever curve for the Swiss economy ...

    Authors: Marc Burri and Daniel Kaufmann
    Citation: Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics 2020 156:6