Filtered by Subscriptions: Nordic & Swiss Economics Use setting Nordic & Swiss Economics
Please entertain me, Statistics Denmark Statistics Denmark’s website is always a good place to start if you’re looking for some off-the-wall statistics to liven up an otherwise data-light week, and this week was no exception: we learned that the average …
21st May 2021
Economic analysis at the cutting edge Given that the Riksbank left its policy settings on hold in April, the minutes from the meeting (which were released this week) were never going to be a rip snorter. That said, we were keen to pore over them for clues …
14th May 2021
What’s Swedish for “gangbusters”? Preliminary GDP data released last week indicated that Swedish output had already surpassed its pre-virus level in March – faster than it takes many to assemble IKEA furniture. In the meantime, the strong set of activity …
7th May 2021
Riksbank and Fed singing off similar hymn sheets As expected, the Riksbank left its repo rate and other policy settings unchanged on Tuesday. (See here .) However, the chunky upward revisions to its near-term GDP forecast were swiftly vindicated by the …
30th April 2021
EC offering carrots, following failure of the stick The long-running saga over a new bilateral “framework agreement” between Switzerland and the EU is back in the news, with the current Swiss President, Guy Parmelin, set to meet his European Commission …
23rd April 2021
Public health officials calling the shots This week’s decision by Denmark to discontinue usage of the AstraZeneca vaccine understandably took the headlines. (Incidentally, note that the jab is now officially known as ‘Vaxzevria’, which could be a …
16th April 2021
The IMF gives Switzerland tops marks for effort The IMF completed its latest Article IV consultation with Switzerland this week. The concluding statements of such missions are typically rather anodyne but this one included some linguistic flourishes. For …
9th April 2021
Swiss manufacturers are too busy for pranks The spaghetti-tree hoax of 1957, which purportedly showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from a tree, is widely regarded as one of the most successful April Fools’ pranks and (perhaps unfairly) exposed the …
1st April 2021
Denmark plots a course to re-opening Sweden announced this week that it will allow vaccinations using the AstraZeneca jab to resume, albeit only for the over-65s, but both Norway and Denmark kept the temporary suspensions in place. It has not all been …
26th March 2021
Norges Bank’s Intentions (4,4): RATE HIKE The Norges Bank’s decision to leave its policy rate on hold at zero this week was never really in doubt. However, as we expected, policymakers shifted to a more hawkish stance and prepared the ground for the start …
19th March 2021
Oh no, not more ECB QE! The SNB would have been forgiven for being a bit perturbed by the dovish message from the ECB yesterday that it expects the pace of its asset purchases to be “significantly higher” in the coming quarter. After all, the prospect of …
12th March 2021
Swiss franc seems set to fall further Swiss inflation came in below expectations in February (see here ), but the period of deflation is likely to end soon. As elsewhere, the latest manufacturing PMI pointed to rising price pressures from disruption and …
5th March 2021
Not immune to the bond market rout As elsewhere, the sell-off in the bond market hit the headlines in Switzerland and the Nordics this week. In keeping with the trend over the past year or so, the Norwegian 10-year yield has tracked that in the US higher, …
26th February 2021
Norges Bank set to blink first In case you missed it, we changed our view on the Norges Bank this week. Having previously forecast the key interest rate to remain on hold into 2023, we now expect the Bank to be the first advanced central bank to begin …
19th February 2021
Attention shifts from repo rate to asset purchases As expected, the Riksbank left its repo rate and other policy settings unchanged on Wednesday morning. (See here .) The Bank was justifiably upbeat about near-term prospects for the economy given the …
12th February 2021
Swedish economy proving resilient Data released this week have provided welcome signs that the Swedish economy is holding up better than we feared. The manufacturing sector remains in rude health, helped by a pick-up in global trade flows. While the …
5th February 2021
Swiss recovery shifts into reverse The plunge in the Swiss KOF Economic Barometer in January, from 104.1 in December to 96.5 (well below even our below-consensus forecast), suggests that the reintroduction of a nationwide lockdown is starting to bite, and …
29th January 2021
Sweden extends (but doesn’t tighten) restrictions Although the number of new daily infections in Sweden has come down over the past week, it remains high by Nordic standards. It is therefore no surprise that the Swedish government announced a two-week …
22nd January 2021
A strong Q4 & a tough Q1 This week’s data from Sweden and Norway add to the signs that both economies ended Q4 on a decent note and outperformed even the best-performing major euro-zone economies in 2020. Mainland GDP in Norway contracted by less than …
15th January 2021
Q4 not as bad as first feared… The manufacturing PMIs from December (released on Monday morning), suggest that the industrial sectors in Switzerland and Sweden ended 2020 on a high, helped by robust demand from Asia. (See here .) The Swiss PMI rose to a …
8th January 2021
US Treasury not on the SNB’s Christmas card list The SNB’s final policy meeting of the year (see here ) was overshadowed by the news on Wednesday that the US Treasury designated Switzerland, along with Vietnam, a “currency manipulator” in its latest …
18th December 2020
Riksbank keeps all options on the table The minutes from the Riksbank’s policy meetings are never what one would call page-turners. However, the account from the November meeting (released on Monday) was a bit more interesting than usual given that two of …
11th December 2020
Swedish services PMI defying gravity, for now The strong set of manufacturing PMIs from Switzerland and Sweden in November mirrored the survey from Germany and did not come as a huge shock. The pick-up in Sweden’s services PMI, released yesterday, was …
4th December 2020
Sweden in the limelight It has been a Sweden-centric week, rounded off with a raft of economic data released this morning. The most noteworthy of which was the second reading of Q3 GDP, which was revised up from the initial estimate (+4.9% q/q versus …
27th November 2020
Minkgate rumbles on in Denmark The political wrangling in Denmark following the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country’s mink farms shifted up a gear this week. The main point of contention remains that the government did not have the legal basis to order …
20th November 2020
It’s always darkest before the dawn The prospect of a vaccine offers hope of faster growth next year than we have factored into our current forecasts. That said, there is less scope for a “vaccine bounce” in Switzerland and the Nordic economies in 2021 …
13th November 2020
Recoveries are on borrowed time In case you missed it, we cut our near-term GDP forecasts this week following the imposition of new national lockdowns in parts of Europe. (See here .) The virus was spreading rapidly in Switzerland when we published our …
6th November 2020
Time running out on Swiss recovery Data published on Friday showed a smaller-than-expected fall in the Swiss KOF Economic Barometer in October, from a downwardly-revised 110.1 in September to 106.6. This left it above its February level and suggests that …
30th October 2020
Nordics not immune, but comparatively resilient In case you missed it, we released our latest Nordic & Swiss Economics Outlook this week. Of course, virus developments are the key uncertainty. However, assuming that the Nordics continue to avoid the scale …
23rd October 2020
Switzerland in the grip of a second wave The share of virus tests returning positive results in Switzerland doubled in the first two weeks of October and mirrored similar rises seen in Italy and the UK over the same period. At about 7%, the positivity …
16th October 2020
Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad US Treasury? Thomas Jordan banged a familiar drum in a speech this week, yet again justifying the SNB’s FX interventions that have seen its balance sheet balloon over the past decade. He also stressed that the Bank’s must have …
9th October 2020
Brighter outlook for the NOK next year Having fallen to four-month lows against the euro in late-September, the Norwegian krone and Swedish krona bounced back this week. While the NOK is vulnerable to falling further in the near term, we think that a …
2nd October 2020
The Swiss head to the polls After a virus-imposed hiatus, the Swiss are set to resume doing what they love best this Sunday: voting. Five separate referenda will be held, covering a range of topics including whether the government should buy some new …
25th September 2020
“No change” three ways on the policy menu Central bankers will take centre stage next week, with the Riksbank kicking things off on Tuesday, and the SNB and the Norges Bank both set to make scheduled policy announcements within 30 minutes of each other on …
18th September 2020
Sweden’s virus approach may be bearing fruit Interpreting Covid data is of course part science, part art, but the fact that confirmed virus cases per capita in Sweden fell below those in its Nordic peers in early-September appears to vindicate Sweden’s …
11th September 2020
Riksbank still biding its time Policymakers at the Riksbank won’t admit it, but they will be feeling pretty comfortable with their position, all things considered. After all, the further increase in the services PMI in August suggests that activity in the …
4th September 2020
Nordics top of the league in H1… The Nordic economies emerged at the top of the economic league in Europe in H1, with comparatively small declines in output. (See here .) The second reading of Swedish Q2 GDP, released this morning, shows that the …
28th August 2020
“Two-speed” Swiss industry finds reverse gear The belated release of Q2 industrial production data from Switzerland on Thursday laid bare the stark divergence in fortunes within the sector. Total manufacturing output dropped by 8.3% q/q in Q2, which was …
21st August 2020
Denmark’s lockdown pays off … According to the GDP indicator released on Friday, the Danish economy contracted by 7.4% q/q in Q2, broadly in line with our forecast. While this was its biggest decline since data began in the 1990s, it was a far cry from …
14th August 2020
Services activity takes a hit, despite no lockdown Given the wider interest in how Sweden’s economy performed under its light-touch lockdown, its preliminary estimate of Q2 GDP growth, released on Wednesday, was perhaps watched more closely-than usual. …
7th August 2020
Mixed messages from the retail data Retail sales data from Switzerland for June, released this morning, show that consumer spending lost a bit of steam at the end of Q2 following the initial sugar-rush as restrictions were eased. Having surged by almost …
31st July 2020
Nordic economies comparatively well placed In case you missed it, we published our Nordic & Swiss Economics Outlook this week. (See here .) The key message is that we forecast the Nordic economies to experience the shallowest recessions in Europe, and our …
24th July 2020
“SNB 101” speech targeted at the US Treasury Thomas Jordan delivered the first-ever virtual IMF Central Banking Lecture on Tuesday, which is named in honour of Michel Camdessus, the longest- serving past IMF Managing Director. The video production had a …
17th July 2020
Nordic economies have weathered Covid well May’s 2.4% m/m rise in mainland GDP in Norway would normally be enough to make you fall of your chair, but it was actually a bit underwhelming given the rapid rebound in our Recovery Tracker since lockdown …
10th July 2020
Nordics gathered momentum into H2 The June PMI surveys from the Nordics, released this week, add to the evidence that the region’s economies are further down the road to recovery than others in Europe. In Sweden, there was plenty to be encouraged by in …
3rd July 2020
Nordic consumers splash the ‘cash’ Retail sales data for May released this week show that consumers in the Nordics have splashed the cash since lockdowns have been eased (figuratively speaking, of course, given that cash usage is increasingly rare in …
26th June 2020
Shallower downturns forecast in the Nordics Amid increasing signs that the Nordic economies have weathered the Covid crisis better than most (see here ) we have upgraded our forecasts for GDP growth over the coming years. (See Table ) As flagged in an …
19th June 2020
Sweden is getting off comparatively lightly The 11% peak-to-trough drop in Swedish household consumption between February and April puts paid to any notion that Sweden has escaped unscathed following its light-touch lockdown. Nonetheless, as grim as they …
12th June 2020
SNB breathes a sigh of relief as the franc slides The positive policy moves out of Europe – including the ECB’s decision yesterday to increase the size and duration of its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme – have reinforced the sense that policymakers …
5th June 2020
Skingsley leaves the door open to a repo rate cut This morning’s upward revision to Swedish Q1 GDP, from the initial estimate of -0.3% to +0.1%, adds to the evidence that the country has enjoyed some economic benefit from its light-touch lockdown. That …
29th May 2020