This paper quantifies the effect of the government-controlled appreciation of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) vis-à-vis the USD from 2005 to 2008 on the prices charged by US producers. As the RMB during that time was pegged to a basket of currencies, the empirical strategy must account for the fact...

Why has Swiss export performance been so strong during the past quarters despite the strong appreciation of the CHF? In this paper, we use historical data on exchange rates and trade at the sectoral level to document that a contributing factor behind the limited impact of the exchange rate is...

The authors document the provision of liquidity in Swiss francs (CHF) by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to banks located outside Switzerland during the recent financial crisis. What makes the Swiss case special is the size of this liquidity provision—at times, 80 percent of all short-term CHF...

Why has Swiss export performance been so strong during the past quarters despite the marked appreciation of the Swiss Franc (CHF)? What is the outlook for Swiss exports given the still elevated CHF? In this article, we shed light on these questions by analysing a panel of Swiss exports...

We develop a general equilibrium model of vertical innovation in which multiple firms compete monopolistically in the quality space. The model features many firms, each of which holds the monopoly to produce a unique quality level of an otherwise homogenous good, and consumers who are...

What is the impact of Chinese import competition on Nordic producer prices? In a panel covering 23 (2 digit) NACE manufacturing sectors from 1995 to 2008, instrumental variable estimations predict that when Chinese imports capture a 1% increase in market share, Nordic producer prices decrease by...

What is the impact of import competition from other low-wage countries (LWCs) on inflationary pressure in Western Europe? This paper seeks to understand whether labor-intensive exports from emerging Europe, Asia, and other global regions have a uniform impact on producer prices in Germany,...

This paper starts by documenting that during the last decades, the human capital embodied in imports from skill abundant nations has noticeably reduced skill accumulation in the less developed world. To identify the causal relation between these variables, the analysis utilizes over-time...

Austrian banks have traditionally issued large volumes of Swiss franc-denominated loans. Although new issuance has virtually stopped since 2008, the outstanding volume (CHF 81 billion at mid-2012) will continue to pose a challenge to financial stability at least in the oming decade. This study...