Thursday , November 14 2024
Home / SNB & CHF / Some 60 percent of all Swiss banknotes are hoarded, study finds

Some 60 percent of all Swiss banknotes are hoarded, study finds

Summary:
Presenting the new version of the CHF1,000 note, March 2019. The amount of Swiss CHF1,000 notes that are hoarded rather than being used in the economy for payments could be as high as 87%, a study by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has shown. The reportexternal link, “Demand for Swiss banknotes: some new evidence”, estimates the volume of Swiss banknotes being stashed – rather than spent or invested – over the period 1950-2017. The results show that a much higher proportion than previously thought could be hoarded, especially the CHF1,000 (,013) note – one of the most valuable bank notes in the world. Depending on the method of estimate used, the amount of such notes stuffed under mattresses (or elsewhere) was

Topics:
Swissinfo considers the following as important: , , ,

This could be interesting, too:

Frank Shostak writes Assumptions in Economics and in the Real World

Conor Sanderson writes The Betrayal of Free Speech: Elon Musk Buckles to Government Censorship, Again

Nachrichten Ticker - www.finanzen.ch writes Bitcoin erstmals über 80.000 US-Dollar

Nachrichten Ticker - www.finanzen.ch writes Kraken kündigt eigene Blockchain ‘Ink’ an – Neue Ära für den Krypto-Markt?

Some 60 percent of all Swiss banknotes are hoarded, study finds

Presenting the new version of the CHF1,000 note, March 2019.

The amount of Swiss CHF1,000 notes that are hoarded rather than being used in the economy for payments could be as high as 87%, a study by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has shown.

The reportexternal link, “Demand for Swiss banknotes: some new evidence”, estimates the volume of Swiss banknotes being stashed – rather than spent or invested – over the period 1950-2017.

The results show that a much higher proportion than previously thought could be hoarded, especially the CHF1,000 ($1,013) note – one of the most valuable bank notes in the world.

Depending on the method of estimate used, the amount of such notes stuffed under mattresses (or elsewhere) was between 79% and 89% in 2017, the economists found. Some 42-60% of CHF200 notes were hoarded, and 8-16% of CHF100 notes.

The average for all denominations was around 60%, showing that some two-thirds of printed banknotes are not being used in the real economy.

Criminal use

Writing about the studyexternal link on Thursday, the Tages Anzeiger newspaper said that this comes as bad news for the SNB, who has maintained that a Swiss preference for paying in cash – even with CHF1,000 notes – justifies the continued printing of such large denominations.

And though the paper did not speculate on for what or where the cash was being hoarded, critics of such high-value banknotes have warned that they are favoured by criminal organisations eager to operate without leaving traces.

The report also showed that levels of stashing vary over time. It wrote: “the hoarding shares increased around the break-up of the Bretton Woods system, were comparatively low in the mid-1990s and have increased significantly since the turn of the millennium and the recent financial and economic crises.”

By comparison, in April, eurozone economies said goodbye to the €500 note; in the US, the highest-value note in circulation is $100.


Tags: ,,
About Swissinfo
Swissinfo
SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *