Population, health, and nutrition (PHN) lending decreased in fiscal 1992 from the record levels of fiscal 1991, in both the amount and the number of operations. Lending amounted to $961.6 million for 16 projects, compared with $1,567.6 million for 28 projects in fiscal 1991. This temporary dip...

The authors empirically study the sensitivity of local interest rates to international interest rates and how that sensitivity is affected by a country's choice of exchange rate regime. To establish the empirical regularities, they use a reduced-form empirical approach to compute both panel and...

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 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...

What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13...

By documenting the evolution of Tobin's q before, during, and after firms internationalize, the authors provide evidence on the bonding, segmentation, and market timing theories of internationalization. Using new data on 9,096 firms across 74 countries over the period 1989-2000, they find that...

This paper studies how access to different markets and crises impact debt financing and maturity. Using data on worldwide corporate issuance activity in domestic and international bond and syndicated loan markets during 1991-2014, the paper shows that these markets are affected differently by...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of how economies in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region have been integrating financially with the rest of the world since the 1990s, using bilateral data on portfolio investments, syndicated bank loans, mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and...

This paper documents how firms in Arab countries issue equity, corporate bonds, and syndicated loans in domestic and international markets to obtain financing and grow. Using a new data set on issuance activity and firm performance, the paper finds that capital raising through these markets has...

This paper surveys the literature to document the main stylized facts, risks, and policy challenges related to the expansion of global nonfinancial corporate debt after the 2008–09 global financial crisis. Nonfinancial corporate debt steadily increased after the crisis, especially in emerging...