This paper examines the impact of start-up regulations and institutional quality on the level of new business activity in a panel of 119 countries between 2001 and 2012. We find robust evidence that new business creation is significantly lower in countries with excessive barriers to entry, a...

The effectiveness of macro-prudential policies to mitigate credit cycles and reduce capital flow volatility is at the center of policy debates. In this chapter, we investigate the factors which influence the performance of macro-prudential tools by focusing on institutions, financial structure,...

The COVID-19 shock hit firms hard, on average, but how did it hit in the distribution of firms, differently between the high-growth superstars and the firms that were already struggling to survive? This paper implements graphical techniques and quantile regression to analyse the effect of the...