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 assesses the consequences of implementing a joint liability debt system in a two-country small open economy model. With joint liability a default of one country makes the other participant liable for its debt. The results highlight a trade-off between the contagion risk, in the sense...

"This paper studies the factors banks perceive as drivers and obstacles to financing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), focusing on the role of competition and the institutional framework. Using a survey of banks in Argentina and Chile, the paper shows that, despite alleged differences in the...