Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/271761 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 10117
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We document how product quality responds to exchange rate movements and quantify the extent to which these quality changes affect the aggregate pass-through into export prices. We analyze the substantial sudden appreciation of the Swiss franc post removal of the 1.20-CHF-per-euro lower bound in 2015 using export data representing a large share of the universe of goods exports from Switzerland. We find that firms upgrade the quality of their products after the appreciation. Furthermore, they disproportionately remove lower-quality products from their product ranges. This quality upgrading and quality sorting effect accounts for a substantial share of the total pass-through one year after the appreciation. We cross-check our results with the microdata underlying the Swiss export price index, which includes an adjustment factor for quality based on firms' reported product replacements, and obtain similar results.
Subjects: 
large exchange rate shocks
exchange rate pass-through
quality adjustment
JEL: 
E30
E31
E50
F14
F41
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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