This paper surveys markets for corporate debt securities in the major industrial countries and the international markets. The discussion includes a comparison of the sizes of the markets for various products, as well as the key operational, institutional, and legal features of primary and...

A structural vector autoregression model is developed to analyze the dynamics of bond spreads among a sample of mature and developing countries during periods of financial stress in the last decade. The model identifies and quantifies the contribution on bond spreads from global market...

Financial markets in the CE4 countries are still shallow compared to other advanced EU countries. While the government bond markets are comparable in size, measured by capitalization in percent of GDP, the private bond, private credit, and equity markets lag behind. Empirical analysis in this...

This paper examines financial market comovements across European transition economies and compares their experience to that of their regions. Correlations in monthly indices of exchange market pressures can partly be explained by direct trade linkages, but not by measures of other fundamentals....

Sizable risk capital from outside may be necessary to accelerate Japan''s corporate restructuring to replace the stock of impaired bank loans. To attract risk capital, impaired loans must find market-clearing prices. However, the asymmetry in the bid-ask prices faced by banks and distressed-debt...

We study the impact of the COVID-19 recession on capital structure of publicly listed U.S. firms. Our estimates suggest leverage (Net Debt/Asset) decreased by 5.3 percentage points from the pre-shock mean of 19.6 percent, while debt maturity increased moderately. This de-leveraging effect is...

Thin capitalization rules (TCRs) aim to mitigate profit shifting by multinational corporations (MNCs) but, by raising the cost of capital for affected affiliates, can also negatively affect real investment. Exploiting unique panel data on multinational companies in 34 countries during 2006-2014,...