This paper examines the impact of Dollar exchange rate volatility on firm productivity in Emerging Markets economies (EMs). Using firm level data covering 16 EMs over the period 1998 -2019, the paper shows that dollar exchange rate volatility reduces firm productivity growth. Exploring channels,...

We develop a micro-founded general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents to identify pertinent constraints to financial inclusion. We evaluate quantitatively the policy impacts of relaxing each of these constraints separately, and in combination, on GDP and inequality. We focus on three...

We investigate how changes in industries’ funding costs affect total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Panel regressions with 31 U.S. and Canadian industries between 1991 and 2007, using industries’ dependence on external funding as an identification mechanism, show that higher funding costs...

Productivity dispersion across countries has led to several studies on the determinants of firm level productivity and the role of macroeconomic policies in determining productivity. In this paper, we investigate the effect of fiscal consolidation on firm level productivity in 12 advanced...

We analyze the causes of the apparent bias towards optimism in growth forecasts underpinning the design of IMF-supported programs, which has been documented in the literature. We find that financial variables observable to forecasters are strong predictors of growth forecast errors. The greater...

Capital misallocation is widely thought to be an important factor underpinning productivity and income gaps between advanced and emerging economies. This paper studies how well Indian banks allocate capital across firms with varying levels of productivity. The analysis reveals that the link...

This paper provides empirical evidence that the size of the spillovers from U.S. monetarypolicy to non-oil GDP growth in the GCC countries depends on the level of oil prices. Thepotential channels through which oil prices could affect the effectiveness of monetary policyare discussed. We find...

State-contingent debt instruments such as GDP-linked warrants have garnered attention as a potential tool to help debt-stressed economies smooth repayments over business cycles, yet very few studies of the empirical properties of these instruments exist. This paper develops a general f ramework...

Assessing default risks for Chinese firms is hard. Standard measures of risk using market indicators may be unreliable because of implicit guarantees, the large role played by less-informed investors, and other market imperfections. We test this assertion by estimating stand-alone 1-year default...

The paper analyzes and quantifies the importance of sovereign risk in determining corporate default premia (yield spreads). It also investigates the extent to which the practice by rating agencies and banks of not rating companies higher than their sovereign (quot;country or sovereign...