This paper studies an optimal renegotiation protocol designed by a benevolent planner when two countries renegotiate with the same lender. The solution calls for recoveries that induce each country to default or repay, trading off the deadweight costs and the redistribution benefits of default...

During the recent U.S. financial crisis, the large decline in economic activity and credit was accompanied by a large increase in the dispersion of growth rates across firms. However, even though aggregate labor and output fell sharply during this period, labor productivity did not. These...

We develop a multicountry model in which default in one country triggers default in other countries. Countries are linked to one another by borrowing from and renegotiating with common lenders with concave payoffs. A foreign default increases incentives to default at home because it makes new...

Using comprehensive firm-level datasets, this paper studies the impact of cross-country variation in financial market development on firms' financing choices and growth. In less financially developed economies, small firms grow faster and have lower leverage than large firms. As financial...

This paper studies the impact of cross-country variation in financial market development on firms' financing choices and growth rates using comprehensive firm-level datasets. We document that in less financially developed economies, small firms grow faster and have lower debt to asset ratios...

show that financial development can rationalize the difference in growth rates between firms of different sizes across countries.

Two years after the rescue package for Greece provided by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May 2010, sovereign debt crises continue to threaten a growing number of countries in the eurozone. We develop a theory for analyzing these crises based on the research of Cole and...

This paper studies linkages across sovereign debt markets when debt is unenforceable and countries choose to default and renegotiate. In the model countries are linked to one another by borrowing from a common lender. Borrowing from a common lender connects borrowing rates across countries as...