Drawing on a literature review, this paper looks at the role that preferential tax regimes (PTRs) for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) play in encouraging enterprise formalization and enterprise growth. The main focus is on emerging economies, notably from Latin America, where this...

Labour markets have reacted very differently to the COVID-19 crisis. In the US, the impact on unemployment rates was rapid across all states. They increased sharply in March and April 2020 and recovered steadily thereafter. In Europe, by contrast, unemployment increased far less, and the...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting public health mitigation have caused large-scale economic disruptions globally. During this time, there is an increased need to predict the macroeconomy's short-term dynamics to ensure the effective implementation of fiscal and monetary policy. However,...

Given China's complex monetary policy framework, the People's Bank of China's (PBOC) monetary policy rule is difficult to infer from its observed behaviour. In this paper, we adopt a novel approach, using text analytics to estimate and interpret the unknown component in the PBOC's reaction...

We introduce a flexible, time-varying network model to trace the propagation of interest rate surprises across different maturities. First, we develop a novel econometric framework that allows for unknown, potentially asymmetric contemporaneous spillovers across panel units and establish the...

We propose a framework of optimal monetary policy where debt sustainability may, or may not, be a relevant constraint for the central bank. We show analytically that in each environment the optimal interest rate path consists of a Taylor rule augmented with forward guidance terms. These terms...

Whilst overall productivity growth is stalling, firms at the frontier are still able to capture the benefits of the newest technologies and business practices. This paper uses linked employer-employee data covering all Belgian firms over a period of almost 20 years and investigates the...

While an extensive strategy literature seeks to explain differences in firm performance, little is known about how much firm, industry and host-regions matter in explaining heterogeneity in export behaviors. The international entrepreneurship literature has highlighted that firm-, industry- and...

CO2 emissions are commonly perceived to rise and fall with aggregate output. Yet many factors, including energy-efficiency improvements, emissions coefficient variations and shifts to cleaner energy, can break the positive emissions-output relationship. To evaluate the importance of such...

We examine the impact of the recently introduced Basel III countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) on foreign lending activities of Canadian banks. Using panel data for the six largest Canadian banks and their foreign activities in up to 94 countries, we explore the variation in CCyB rates across...