Fixed investment was the most important contributing factor to the boom-bust cycle in Cyprus over the last decade. Investment boomed during a credit boom in mid-2000s, during which the corporate sector borrowed heavily. Investment collapsed after 2008 when the credit boom ended. Investment and...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This systemic risk like no other at a time of record-breaking debt levels, especially among nonfinancial firms across the world, could exacerbate corporate vulnerabilities, deepen macro-financial...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess the likely evolution of nonfinancial corporate performance going forward, this paper investigates empirically the impact of past pandemics using firm-level data on more than 537,000 companies...

Recent literature has shown that corporate indebtedness affects firm-level investment behavior but not necessarily aggregate business cycles. I argue that interactions among heterogeneous firms play an important role in equilibrium. After a downturn, financially unconstrained firms in...

High corporate indebtedness can pose an important threat to the adjustment processes in some of the Euro area periphery countries, through its drag on investment as well as the possible migration of private sector losses to the sovereign balance sheet. This paper examines the macroeconomic...

This paper explores whether public investment crowds out or crowds in private investment. To this aim, we build a database of about half a million firms from 49 countries. We find that the effect of public investment on corporate investment depends both on leverage and financial constraints....

Over the past two decades, the growth rate of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing and transition economies has increased significantly. Given the role of physical capital accumulation in determining the economic growth rate, it is important to assess how domestic investment...

We use loan-level data on syndicated lending to a large sample of developing countries between 1993and 2017 to estimate the mobilization effects of multilateral development banks (MDBs), controllingfor a large set of fixed effects. We find evidence of positive and significant direct and...

A case study approach is used to assess the multi-pronged policy response of seven small financially open economies with flexible exchange rate regimes to external shocks following the global financial crisis. FX intervention was frequently used- including during outflow episodes to prevent...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has helped accelerate the digitization of public services. The lockdown initiated by most governments to curb the spread of the coronavirus forced most public agencies to switch to online platforms to continue providing information and services to the...