Erne, RolandRolandErneImboden, NatalieNatalieImboden2015-01-192015-01-272015 Oxfor2015Cambridge Journal of Economicshttp://hdl.handle.net/10197/6303What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neo-corporatist 'accompanying measures' to the Bilateral EU–Switzerland Agreement on Free Movement of Persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins? The formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will. Equally, different 'varieties of capitalism' cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country. Instead, our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes, namely, the use of different policy frames – i.e. 'anti-discrimination' in the EPG and 'unfair competition' in the EPN case – and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by Switzerland’s employer associations in the two cases.enThis is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in the Cambridge Journal of Economics following peer review. The version of record: Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39(2): page numbers (2015) is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cje/bev003EqualitySwitzerlandEuropean UnionGenderMigrant workersEqual payJournal Article39210.1093/cje/bev0032015-01-14https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/