The paper examines the relationship between leverage and growth in a group of emerging central and eastern European countries, who are at different levels of financial market development. We hypothesize a non-linear relationship in that moderate leverage could boost growth while very high...

This paper studies the long term consequences on workers' labour earnings of the credit crunch induced by the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We study the evolution of both employment and wages in a large sample of Italian workers followed for nine years after the start of the crisis. We rely on a...

This study sets out to examine the extent to which access to credit and credit rationing are influenced by the microfinance type based on the major factors determining micro, small and medium enterprises' access to credit from microfinance institutions in the era of financial liberalization. The...

The study aims at testing the Ghana Microfinance Policy set up to support the vulnerable through access to credit. We resort to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to determine if there is positive discrimination in favor of women and young entrepreneurs in the rationing behavior of the...

A Beveridgean pension scheme invariably introduces a wedge between the wage rate and the marginal take-home pay. A Bismarckian one can do so only if it is not actuarially fair, or in the presence of credit rationing. Interestingly, if the two possible sources of distortion are present at the...

We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history,...

We use a unique dataset to estimate the impact of a large credit supply shock on employment in Spain. We exploit marked differences in banks' health at the onset of the Great Recession. Several weak banks were rescued by the State and they reduced credit more than other banks. We compare...

Using a panel of 1122 UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange over the period of 1981 to 2009, endogenous switching regression models (SRM) incorporating a predicted corporate efficiency index are estimated in this paper in an effort to clarify the role of cash flow in examining the impact...

In this article we study the resilience of the Portuguese labor market, in terms of job flows, employment and wage developments, in the context of the current recession. We single out the huge contribution of job destruction, especially due to the closing of existing firms, to the dramatic...

This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods...