The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has halted economic activity worldwide, hurting firms and pushing them toward bankruptcy. This paper provides a unified framework to organize the policy debate related to firm financing during the downturn, centered along four main points. First, the economic...

This paper examines changes in bank capital and capital regulations since the global financial crisis, in the Europe and Central Asia region. It shows that banks in Europe and Central Asia are better capitalized, as measured by regulatory capital ratios, than they were prior to the crisis....

This paper studies how crises prompted firms to switch borrowing across markets, impacting the amount borrowed, maturity, and currency denomination at the firm and aggregate levels. Using data on worldwide debt issuance from advanced and emerging economies, the paper shows that firms shifted...