Many countries' insolvency systems focus on restructuring financial liabilities, and ignore operational liabilities such as leases and long-term supplier contracts. We model insolvency procedures with and without operational restructuring options. Such options avoid excessive liquidation of...

The decline in cash use and growing use of digital distribution for retail banking leads to a reduced need for bank branches. Lending to small and medium sized firms (SMEs) has not benefited as much from a digital transformation, and widespread branch closures may reduce their supply of credit....

We investigate financing constraints in a large cross-country data set covering most of the European economy. Firm level investment sensitivity to cash flow is used to identify financing constraints. We find that the sensitivities are significantly positive on average, controlling for country...

Large-scale asset programmes aim to impact the real economy through the financial system. The ECB has focused much of its policies on safe assets. An intended channel of transmission of this type of programme is the "portfolio rebalancing channel", whereby investors are influenced to shift their...

In 2015, 70% of newly-issued leveraged loans had weaker enforcement features, called covenant-light or "cov-lite;" this is nearly a three-time increase in cov-lite issuance compared to a previous peak in 2007. We evaluate whether this development can be attributed to market overheating, increased...

We examine an international panel of domestic firms to quantify the degree to which conforming tax avoidance changes with statutory tax rates. We derive an alternative estimation method that identifies conforming tax avoidance from the variation of tax rates over time and across countries. We...

This paper studies how corporate tax hikes transmit across countries through multinationals' internal networks of subsidiaries. We build a parsimonious multicountry model to underscore two opposing spillover effects: While tax competition between countries generates positive investment...

Trotz des Commitments zu dem NATO-Ziel reichen die Ausgabenpläne der Bundesregierung nicht aus, um das vereinbarte NATO-Ziel, 2 % des Bruttoinlandsprodukts für Verteidigung auszugehen, zu erfüllen. Hubertus Bardt, Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft, Köln, stellt fest, dass die dauerhafte...

Using granular gas price data and rich variation in corporate tax rates, we find that corporate taxes increase consumer prices. About 64% of the corporate tax is borne by consumers. The effect is stronger when firms have limited access to tax planning opportunities, face stricter tax...

We examine the role of tax incentives, tax awareness, and complexity in tax evasion. We observe a specific type of tax evasion among business owners in Swedish administrative panel data, after the tax authority has approved all tax returns. For the period 2006-2009, approximately 5% of tax...