Low growth and huge current account deficits have characterised the Portuguese economy over the past decade. Easy credit in global markets, combined with the absence of incentives to limit loan-to-deposit ratios until recently, made it possible to finance internationally high levels of...

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have long been one of the most significant policy interventions in the U.S. affecting firm behavior, but little is known about their outcomes. This paper estimates the effects on employment using a list of all SBA loans linked to annual data on all U.S....

The substantial costs of foreclosures to individuals and society motivated nearly $40 billion in government subsidies to homeowners during the Great Recession. Most of these subsidies were in the form of permanent loan modifications with mixed evidence of effectiveness. This paper estimates the...

We explore the interaction between labour market reforms and financial frictions. Our study combines a new cross-country reform database on labour market reforms with matched firm-bank data for nine euro area countries over the period 1999 to 2013. While we find that labour market reforms are...

The European banking industry is undergoing significant structural changes and cost-cutting programs, also as a result of the financial crisis. Yet, the institutional features that affect banks’ ability to adjust costs and in particular personnel expenses, which comprise a significant part of...

Deutschland hatte, wie viele andere europäische Staaten, zwischen 2000 und 2008 eine Zunahme des Arbeitskräfteangebotes zu verzeichnen. Getrieben wurde diese Entwicklung durch die weitere Steigerung der Erwerbsbeteiligung vornehmlich der Älteren. Besonders stark zugenommen hat die...

We study the employment effects of loan guarantee programs aiming at mitigating financing frictions for small businesses. Exploiting worker-level panel data combined with plausibly exogenous heterogeneity in policy generosity across French regions, we find that such programs have a significant...

The government of India had initiated bank payments of wages under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP). This initiative is undoubtedly a big financial inclusion drive particularly among the rural poor of India. This paper has tried to evaluate this financial...

The paper uses Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis as an analytical framework for understanding the subprime mortgage crisis and for introducing adequate reforms to restore economic stability. We argue that the subprime crisis has structural origins that extend far beyond the housing and...