Traditionally, insurers are seen as stabilisers of financial markets that act countercyclically by buying assets whose price falls. Recent studies challenge this view by providing empirical evidence of procyclicality. This paper sheds new light on the underlying reasons for these opposing views....

Using a large panel of official bilateral loan data for 111 borrowing countries and 78 lending countries between 1980 and 2020, this paper shows that international government borrowing from bilateral sources is acyclical with respect to the economic cycle of the borrower, but procyclical with...