This paper uses a unique dataset where credit rejections experienced by euro area firms are matched with firm and bank characteristics. This allows us to study simultaneously the role that bank and firm weakness had in the credit reduction observed in the euro area during the sovereign debt...

In various writings Karl Marx made references to an "aristocracy of finance" in Western Europe and the United States that dominated ownership of the public debt. Drawing on original research, this paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the pattern of public debt ownership within the US...