5 A note on household versus enterprise membership: The total of WIR Client Enterprises shown above (60,703) is 81 percent of total for WIR customers that year (74,732), as shown in the annual Rapport de Gestion (2005). The remainder will be household memberships (Winkler, 2010). Note that although total Balances of Non-Registered Client Enterprises are about twice those of Registered Clients in most industries (except in Retail and Hospitality), the Turnover for both groups is often quite similar. This is because the Velocity (= Turnover/Balance) at which Balances circulate is always higher for Registered Clients. This seems to reflect the more active use of WIR reserves among Registered Clients. These may have a larger proportion of customers or suppliers who are also WIR members. This leaves open the question, however, of how such usage changes in an economic downturn. We shall see that Turnover tends to pick up during a recession for both Non-Registered and Registered Clients, but that this is driven primarily by the increased Balances of the former. This, we conjecture, represents a form of non-bank credit that larger firms are extending to SME, analogously to the credit extended through trade-credits in the commercial economy as a whole (Nilsen, 2002). All types of goods and services are exchanged for WIR – construction, hotel stays, restaurant meals, used vehicles, legal services – with offerings posted online and in publications like WIR-Plus (2009). Prices are quoted in both Swiss Francs (SFr) and units of WIR, and often a mix of the two, with a maximum percent of payment accepted in WIR.
For ease of comparison, WIR prices are
denominated in the same units as SFr. The WIR-Bank keeps tabs on each customer in terms of her account in WIR credits or debits. From the individual’s point of view, an account in WIR is much like an ordinary checking account with clearing balances and limits on how large a negative balance can be run. (WIR-Bank is a registered Swiss bank, and so also provides ordinary banking services in SFr.) The long-term counter-cyclical activity of WIR Turnover is demonstrated by Table 2 above, and the previous study of Stodder (2009). The present study examines this activity on a sector-by-sector