The topic of this paper has been motivated by the rising unemployment rate of low-skilled relative to high-skilled labour in Switzerland. Between 1991 and 2014, Switzerland experienced the highest relative increase in the low-skilled unemployment rate among all OECD countries. A natural culprit for this development is “globalization” as indicated by some mass layoffs in Switzerland and as commonly voiced in public debates all over the world. Our analysis, which is based on panel data covering the years 1991 to 2008 and approximately 33,000 individuals employed in the Swiss manufacturing sector, does not, however, confirm this presumption. We do not find strong evidence for a positive relationship between import competition and (low-skilled) individuals’ likelihood of becoming unemployed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s41937-017-0006-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Over the last decade, European Union members have experienced a dramatic increase in imports. This increase was accompanied by a strong growth in the number of imported goods and trading partners, indicating positive welfare gains for consumers via an extended set of consumption possibilities, as pointed out in the "New Trade Theory". In this paper, we apply the methodology developed by Feenstra (1994) and to estimate structurally the gains from imported variety for the 27 countries of the European Union using highly disaggregated trade data at the HTS-8 level from Eurostat for the period of 1999 to 2008. Our results show that, within the European Union, especially "newer" and smaller member states exhibit high gains from newly imported varieties. Furthermore, we find that the vast majority of the gains from variety for consumers stem from intra-European Union trade.

Summary Since the seminal work of Krugman (1979), variety gains from trade are recognized as an important channel of welfare gains. In this paper, the gains from variety are estimated for Switzerland. It is found that despite the openness of the Swiss economy these gains are not substantial and smaller than in other countries; specifically compared to the gains in the United States. It is shown that the reasons for this result are twofold: First, the Swiss imports are shown not to be as differentiated as their U.S. counterparts; consequently, new varieties do not provide the same value to consumers. Second, variety growth of imports in Switzerland is much smaller compared to variety growth in larger countries. It is furthermore shown that this latter effect is quantitatively more important than the first.

This paper presents a framework to assess the relative importance of three key sources of productivity growth that international trade research focuses on: (1) interindustry specialization; (2) intra-industry reallocation of resources across heterogeneous firms; and (3) technological progress. We illustrate how to apply the framework by deciphering the productivity dynamics of the Swiss manufacturing industry. We find that intra-industry reallocations are the most important source of growth in aggregate total factor productivity, spurred by the productivity growth of large, incumbent firms and the entry of new firms. Inter-industry specialization and general technological progress, nevertheless, remain important supplementary sources of productivity growth. | IN TRO DUCT IO NProductivity growth is a driving force for economic welfare, but what drives productivity? (Neo-) Classical trade models underscore the role of specialization across industries in fostering productivity, while the "new" trade theory highlights the impact of reallocations of resources among firms within industries. A third strand of the trade literature emphasizes the impact of trade on productivityenhancing R&D. 1 How important are these different factors in relative terms? To shed some light on this issue, we develop and apply empirically a framework that decomposes aggregate productivity growth into the contributions from inter-industry and intra-industry reallocations and general technological progress. Our framework builds on those developed in Baily, Hulten, Campbell, Bresnahan, and Caves (1992), Grilliches andRegev (1995), andKrizan (2001). We offer two innovations.First, we extend the static single-industry concept of Olley and Pakes (1996, henceforth OP) to a dynamic multi-industry one. This allows us to evaluate the relative strength of reallocations across as opposed to within industries. The advantage of the OP concept lies in the distinction between changes in Rev Int Econ. 2018;26:339-356.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/roie

This paper analyzes the relationship between factor substitutability and the energy intensity of manufacturing firms. Specifically, we compare the degree of substitutability between the input factors capital, labor, energy, and material for firms with low, medium, and high energy cost shares using a panel of Swiss manufacturing companies covering the period from 1997 to 2008. Our findings indicate substitutability between almost all production factors with one notable exception. Energy and capital are complements in the energy-intensive firm sample: A 1% increase in energy prices decreases capital use by 0.09%. We show that this complementarity is gradually increasing in the energy intensity of firms and draft important policy implications.