![]() Kraft and Kraft (1978) explore the direction of causality between energy consumption and GDP, which initiated a substantial literature. In 1956, the Federal Reserve Board added electricity production as a component to the indicator for industrial production ( Federal Reserve Board 2019). The role of electricity as a means or as a measure of economic activity has long been recognized. ![]() A testament to that is the clearly visible 7-day seasonality of electricity consumption: there is significantly less consumption on weekends than during weekdays. As a result, the consumption of electricity should be a proxy for economic activity. Moreover, almost all economic activity requires electricity. Instead, electricity is largely created just in time, and to the extent it is stored, this happens in facilities of the producers. Electricity is essentially not stored at the site of consumption. One interesting candidate as a proxy of economic activity-the one I focus on in this paper-is electricity consumption. All of these data are available long before GDP is estimated and published, and a comprehensive high frequency GDP indicator will combine most of them Footnote 3. If the situation is dire, the number of insolvencies also clearly contains information about economic distress. The number of payments per unity of time could also be of interest. Air pollution data is probably also closely connected to economic activity and is continuously monitored. For instance, traffic data (movements of cars, usage of public transportation, and transported tons of goods) could contain valuable information. What the decision makers need is a rough proxy that is available with short delay and at high frequency, a proxy that can give guidance to the question: “How is the economy doing? Right now?” GDP data are available at quarterly frequency and only with considerable delay. But hard data on the quantitative effect was not available. Notably, on March 21, public gatherings of more than five people were forbidden.ĭuring these developments, it was obvious that the measures would have significant economic impact. Several further tightenings were ordered in the following weeks (including restrictions on travels from France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and all non-Schengen states). Exceptions were granted to food shops, take-away restaurants, pharmacies, hospitals (with restrictions), postal services and banks, public transportation, gas stations, social emergency institutions, public administration, and a few others Footnote 2. Only 3 days later, on March 16, the ordinance was changed and a broad shutdown of parts of the economy was initiated: all shops and open markets, restaurants, entertainment and cultural enterprises (including alpine tourism), and services with physical contact (such as hairdressers, etc.) were ordered to close. ![]() ![]() Restaurants were restricted to host at most 50 guests at the same time. Gatherings of more than 100 people were restricted. It restricted travel from Italy and ordered schools to close. On March 13, it issued an ordinance with more drastic measures. The first measure was already taken on February 28: the government issued an ordinance forbidding gatherings of more than 1000 people Footnote 1. On March 16, the government closed down a significant part of the economy and public life. On February 24, 2020, the first infection with SARS-CoV-2 was detected in Switzerland.
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