Abstract In this paper we ask whether countries can influence their exposure to changes in global financial conditions. Specifically, we show that even though we can model cross-country capital flows via a global factor that closely tracks changes in global financial conditions, there is a large...

We study the role that changes in credit and fiscal positions play in explaining current account fluctuations. Empirically, the current account declines when credit increases, and when the fiscal balance declines. We use a two-country model with financial frictions and fiscal policy to study...

How does unconventional monetary policy affect corporate capital structure and investment decisions? We study the transmission channel of quantitative easing and its potential diminishing returns on investment from a corporate finance perspective. Using a rich bank-firm matched data of Japanese...

Covid-19 has exacerbated economic and social vulnerabilities across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). There is a risk that growth could be lower for longer, with a setback to development. Post-pandemic reforms thus become even more important, especially with constrained scope for fiscal and monetary...

To examine the drivers of innovation, this paper studies the global R and D effort to fight the deadliest diseases and presents four results. We find: (1) global pharmaceutical R and D activity-measured by clinical trials-typically follows the 'law of diminishing effort': id est the elasticity...

We document the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Brazilian labor market focusing on employment, wages and hours worked using the nationally representative household surveys PNAD-Continua and PNAD COVID. Sectors most susceptible to the shock because they are more...

The fiscal policy response to the COVID-19 shock in most LAC countries was much larger than during the GFC, suggesting fiscal space was not as tight as expected. We argue that it is feasible and desirable, though not without risks, to embark in a more gradual consolidation path than currently...

This paper assesses whether corporate liquidity needs in the G7 economies were met during the containment phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (February-June 2020) using various approaches to identify credit supply shocks. The pandemic crisis adversely affected nonfinancial corporate sector cash...

Raising South Africa's low employment rate to levels seen in emerging market or advanced economy peers could raise GDP per capita by 50 to 60 percent and reduce income inequality dramatically in the long term. By putting further strain on an already fragile labor market, Covid-19 has raised the...

The employment impact of environmental policies is an important question for policy makers. We examine the effect of increasing the stringency of environmental policy across a broad set of policies on firms' labor demand, in a novel identification approach using Worldscope data from 31 countries...