The first, and possibly the most important, economic fact about Switzerland is that it is a very rich country. No visitor to any Swiss town can fail to notice the glitter of wealth from behind shop windows. Everything looks solid, well-made and expensive. In late 1973, the National-Zeitung published figures which gave statistical support to the impression of the eye. In terms of gross national product per head of population, Switzerland was then the richest country in the world (Switzerland $6890, Sweden $6510, Federal Republic of Germany $6260, United States $6090). Twenty years later in its 1993 report the World Bank arrived at the same result. Swiss income in dollars per head stood at $36410, ahead of Luxemburg at $35580 and Japan in third place at $31450. Exchange rate fluctuations distort these figures, but Switzerland is one of the three or four richest countries in the world, no matter how ‘rich’ is defined. In 2005 the World Bank ranked Switzerland in terms of Gross National Income per head as number three after Luxemburg and Norway. On 10 July 2013, the Huffington Report wrote that: ‘The tiny, landlocked central European country is known for investing in its people. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum's 2013 Human Capital Report, Switzerland invests more in the health, education and talent of its people than any other country in the world.’

The Swiss have been rich for a long time. Paul Bairoch shows that from 1880 to 1950 only the United Kingdom had a higher gross national product per head of population than Switzerland. On average in this period Switzerland was one-fifth richer than Belgium, France and the Low Countries and one-quarter richer than the average for Europe as a whole. Roman Studer has shown in a fascinating recent article that the Swiss were not markedly richer than any other Western European country during most of the nineteenth century and only began to become better paid in the period after 1880.

How rich were the Swiss in the Middle Ages? Hektor Ammann did a good deal of research on just that question in his study of the cloth-making canton of Schaffhausen in the later Middle Ages.