The recent crisis was characterized by massive illiquidity. This paper reviews what we know and don't know about illiquidity and all its friends: market freezes, fire sales, contagion, and ultimately insolvencies and bailouts. It first explains why liquidity cannot easily be apprehended through...

This paper investigates the effect of cyclical macroeconomic policy and financial sector characteristics on growth. Using cross-country, cross-industry OECD data, it yields two main findings. First, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies foster growth disproportionately in more...

This paper analyzes the impact of cyclical fiscal policy on industry growth. Using Rajan and Zingales' (1998) difference-in-difference methodology on a panel data sample of manufacturing industries across 15 OECD countries over the period 1980-2005, we show that industries with relatively...

In this paper, we use cross-industry, cross-country panel data to test whether industry growth is positively affected by the interaction between the reaction of real short-term interest rates to the business cycle and industry-level measures of financial constraints. Financial constraints are...