How immigration has made the Swiss poorer

In the Swiss debate on our Bilaterale I study, our findings are often mischaracterized. It is our critics who seem to be out of line with the facts and with standard economic theory.

The Europe Economics report for Stiftung für bürgerliche Politik on the economic impacts of the Bilaterale I package has attracted quite a lot of discussion, particularly for its analysis of the economic impacts of immigration into Switzerland over the past couple of decades. Whereas older studies, conducted on past data, had tended to find positive impacts of immigration on Swiss GDP, the Europe Economics study found that the GDP of Swiss domestic citizens (defined roughly as those living in Switzerland prior to 2002) had fallen by some 1.3 to 2.0 per cent. 

Readers familiar with our study will recall that our key models are based around analysing the impact on Swiss domesti ...