The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant vulnerabilities in public-sector administrative capacity, particularly in the implementation of crisis-related state aid schemes. Under conditions of extreme workload, time pressure, and legal constraints, administrative processes became critical...

Development finance institutions mobilize over $250 billion annually through blended finance operations, yet practitioners lack a unified framework to evaluate its catalytic effect and for choosing among instruments. I develop a model of investment multipliers under two canonical market...

This paper evaluates the employment and sales effects of two widely used financial support instruments for small and medium-sized enterprises, interest rate subsidies and credit guarantees, using administrative program data from Kazakhstan matched to the universe of firms. Utilizing staggered...