Research Division Business Tendency Surveys

One vital source of information is the monthly and quarterly business tendency surveys of companies in Switzerland. These data are unique for their topicality, representativeness and abundance of detail. The business tendency surveys permit in-depth and multilevel insight into the business situation of companies and therefore provide key information on the status and development of the Swiss economy. The quality of the surveys is monitored regularly and, if need be, improved. The survey data are systematically compared with relevant statistics. The sample and the weighting used to aggregate the surveys are continuously being checked and revised if necessary.

Just about all research divisions and sections at the KOF use the surveys as a source of data at the micro and macro level.

In the future, the data from the surveys will increasingly be made available to researchers as well as a broader public. There is growing demand for regional as well as sector-specific analyses and a break-down of the Swiss economic cycle.  The same applies to company data for econometric analysis. In contrast to other sources, our survey data allow us to analyse such aspects as company expectations and compare them to actual results.

In the wake of international harmonisation that is being promoted by the European Commission and the OECD, the KOF has begun adapting its business surveys and hence making them more comparable at an international scale.   This extends not only to the content of the questions, but also to the vocabulary chosen, the definition of the industries and the determination of the survey period. The international standards have already been applied to various surveys. In addition to international comparability, survey harmonisation also offers new possibilities for aggregating identical questions across different sectors to produce results at an overarching economic level. For instance, one question that appears in all economic sectors concerns the current business situation. The answers to this question are used to compute the KOF business situation indicator. The KOF “business situation” report provides information on the current state of the Swiss economy.