Using a pan-European data set of 8.5 million firms, this paper finds that firms with high debt overhang invest relatively more than otherwise similar firms if they are operating in sectors facing good global growth opportunities. At the same time, the positive impact of a marginal increase in...

We use firm-level financial data to illustrate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis under several scenarios. We estimate COVID-19 induced cumulative net revenue losses for EU companies in the range of 5.4 to 10.0% of total assets, depending on the strength of the policy support and length of the...

Does an increase in lending by multinational development banks affect the private lending activity in developing countries? We show that this is indeed the case using data on loans and investments by the European Investment Bank (EIB) in combination with data on syndicated loans. We find that a...

We develop a sovereign default risk index using natural language processing techniques and 10 million news articles covering over 100 countries. The index is a highfrequency measure of countries' default risk, particularly for those lacking marketbased measures: it correlates with sovereign CDS...

Macro-based asset allocation, i.e., the identification of turning points in macro-financial cycles and the allocation of assets accordingly, has attracted a lot of interest in recent years. This interest was sparked by volatile financial markets, more synchronized returns across asset classes...

Using a representative sample of European firms, this paper studies whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decisions to invest in employee training. It combines survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index...

High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs) have a large economic impact, but are notoriously hard to predict. Previous research has linked high-growth episodes to the configuration of lumpy indivisible resources inside firms, such that high capacity utilisation levels might stimulate future growth. We...