Increasingly described in the literature and international reports as a key factor in business decisions, transparent economic policies have become central to investment and the establishment of foreign companies in a specific area. In this sense, a plethora of rankings consider transparency—almost always linked with stability—as one of the most important location factors, stressing the importance of a predictable environment and trust among all stakeholders. However, the lack of evidence calls for an empirical assessment of the relationship between transparency and economic attractiveness. This contribution addresses this issue through data collected from a survey targeting economic development agencies in Switzerland, data on the presence of companies in the country’s federated entities, and factors commonly used to assess cantonal attractiveness in the Swiss case. The findings indicate that transparency matters to all the economic developers surveyed, although more traditional factors of attractiveness are regarded as more essential. Among these, quality of the workforce is considered as the most important variable. This observation is reinforced by the empirical analysis conducted here, mostly based on tangible variables provided by the locational quality indicator from Credit Suisse.

越来越多的文献和国际报告将透明的经济政策描述为商业决策的关键因素，透明的经济政策已成为特定领域投资和外国公司设立的核心。从这个意义上说，大量排名都将透明度——几乎总是与稳定性联系在一起——作为最重要的位置因素之一，强调了可预测的环境和所有利益相关者之间信任的重要性。然而，由于缺乏证据，需要对透明度和经济吸引力之间的关系进行实证评估。本文稿通过从针对瑞士经济发展机构的调查中收集的数据、关于公司在该国联邦实体中存在的数据来解决这个问题，以及在瑞士案例中通常用于评估州吸引力的因素。调查结果表明，透明度对所有接受调查的经济发展商都很重要，尽管更传统的吸引力因素被认为更为重要。其中，劳动力素质被认为是最重要的变量。此处进行的实证分析加强了这一观察，主要基于位置质量指标提供的有形变量瑞士信贷。