Through this paper the author discusses the phenomenon of excessive Government borrowing and the factors that lead Governments to be so dependent on financial markets. It is argued that the combined effect of unregulated financial intermediaries, hedge funds and Credit Rating Agencies in...

Through this paper the author discusses the phenomenon of excessive Government borrowing and the factors that lead Governments to be so dependent on financial markets. It is argued that the combined effect of unregulated financial intermediaries, hedge funds and Credit Rating Agencies in...

Over the next decade, governments around the world will invest massively in new projects, aiming at closing the long-identified infrastructure gap, to sustain economic and social development, and to recover from recent adverse shocks. This paper examines this topic from two perspectives: (i) how...

The global economy is in the midst of an unprecedented slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To assess the likely evolution of nonfinancial corporate performance going forward, this paper investigates empirically the impact of past pandemics using firm-level data on more than 537,000 companies...

This paper focuses on global financial centres, which played a key role in the financial crisis of 2008. The trade in derivatives, despite being limited in large part to Europe and the USA, significantly influenced the global economy and the competitiveness of financial centres. This study...

This study examines cash savings from net equity issues, net debt issues and internally generated cash flows. We observe that savings rates depend on the level of cash flows. For negative cash flows, savings rates are very low from cash flows and higher from net equity and net debt issues. For...

We study the effects of firm-level exposure to an epidemic disease on corporate cash holdings amongst U.S firms. Using a text-based measure of firm-level exposure to epidemic diseases and difference-in-difference estimation strategy, we document a positive relationship between the onset of an...

Mandatory pension contributions (MCs) are negative shocks to a firm's liquidity that can unfavorably impact its cost of capital, financing, and investment plans. We study whether firms faced with MCs use both non-cash (NEM) and cash generating earnings management (CEM) to partly offset their...

In this paper we discuss the continued transition of financial markets towards trade standardization and the clearing of transactions, outlining the role of central clearing counterparties CCPs in reducing systemic and idiosyncratic risk. We contrast this with a discussion on bespoke non-cleared...

The paper analyzes optimal climate policy under uncertainty. It endows a recent quantitative analytic integrated assessment model (IAM) with long-run risk, adapting methods from the asset pricing literature to deal with endogenous climate risk. The model solves in closed-form for general degrees...