infonet-economy

Based on a large international survey we analyze how German- French- and Italian-speaking Swiss differ in their investment decision behavior and competence as compared to their closest neighbors abroad speaking the same language. Although language may be closer to the individual self than the country of residence, we find that there are greater similarities in the decision behavior of Swiss speaking different languages than between Swiss and their linguistically closest neighbors abroad. These similarities hold also for the investment competence. We conclude that there is Swissness in the decision behavior and in the investment competence, which most likely has cultural origins, as it cannot be explained by demographic and socio-economic similarities between the regional samples.