摘要：In their introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on "Great
Depressions of the 20th Century" (Vol. 5, 2002), Timothy J. Kehoe and Edward C. Prescott argue that
in the last few years "great depressions" have hit two rich countries: New Zealand and Switzerland.
We briefly discuss Kehoe/Prescott's definition of a "great depression". Thereafter, we analyse the
underlying data – time series of labour productivity for the countries under consideration – and perform
sensitivity tests with respect to alternative operationalisations for Switzerland and the U.S. It is shown
that with different (and arguably more appropriate) time series the impressive growth gap between the
well performing U.S. and poor-performing Switzerland reduces considerably. Yet, this still does not
explain the comparatively poor economic growth in Switzerland during the last decades, which is
noted by many observers. Accordingly, we analyse economic performance within the comparative
cross-country framework, which is now standard in the new empirical literature on the determinants of
economic growth. Based on a balanced panel data set on a large sample of countries with multiple
observations through time, the growth rate of labour productivity is regressed on its presumed
determinants, which follow from an extended version of the neo-classical aggregate production
function. This analysis departs from the standard approach by focussing on the country-specific fixed
effects rather than the structural growth parameters. The results show that there is no significant
deviation of Switzerland's performance from its predicted value after taking account of the explicit
determinants of economic growth.
