We use novel data on firm-level attention to characterize firms’ exposures to uncertainty. Our data captures a daily cross-section of firm-employee reading across thousands of topics. We use natural language processing tools to assess the types of topics firms are reading and show that firms...

This paper analyzes the effects of product market competition on zombie firms in the US using a large sample of publicly traded firms. First, we show that the asset-weighted share of zombie firms at the industry level decreases significantly with more competition. This decrease is mostly...

Cash holdings at the onset of a financial crisis are a key determinant of investment by SMEs not only during the crisis but also during the recovery period. Cash-rich SMEs could maintain their capital stock during the global financial crisis, while cash-poor rivals reduced theirs. This gave...

Labor market performance has differed considerably between OECD countries over the last two decades. The focus of the literature so far has been to ask whether these differences can be explained by varying degrees of labor market rigidities and generosity of welfare states. This paper takes a...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the financial structure of non-financial corporations in the European Union prior to the 2008 crisis and to determine whether the ex-ante differences in corporate financial structure had an impact on the severity of the 2008 financial crisis in European...

Anglo-Saxon countries have been successful in the 1990s concerning labor market performance compared to the former role models Germany and Japan. This reversal in relative economic performance might be related to idiosyncracies in financial markets with bank-based financial markets as in Germany...

Using Swedish bank lending data, investment data and accounting data, I examine how the financial crisis affected corporate investment through its effect on credit availability. Sensitivity to a credit supply shock is measured as credit reserves, defined as unused credit on lines of credit. I...

The purpose of this study is to investigate how firms responded to the deterioration of bank health during the financially turbulent periods in the 2000s in making investment decisions and in meeting demand for liquidity. A rise in uncertainty regarding the ability to obtain external funds may...

The process of globalization encompasses economic and financial integration. Abolition of capital controls and dismantling of barriers of different kinds are important ingredients of the process that will entirely change the exposure of previously sheltered companies to shocks on the global...

We quantify the role of financial factors behind the sluggish post-crisis performance of European firms. We use a firm-bank-sovereign matched database to identify separate roles for firm and bank balance sheet weaknesses arising from changes in sovereign risk and aggregate demand conditions. We...