The SME sector is often hailed as an important engine of economic growth. But recent research suggests that young rather than small firms are the main contributors to employment growth. This paper shows that young firms are also key contributors to profit growth across advanced economies. It...

At moderate levels, debt improves welfare and enhances growth. But high levels can be damaging. When does debt go from good to bad? We address this question using a new dataset that includes the level of government, non-financial corporate and household debt in 18 OECD countries from 1980 to...

We construct a measure of the short-term world interest rate using principal component analysis. Drawing on real interest rate data for 18 OECD countries for the period 1985 - 2008, persistent deviations from the world interest rate that cannot be explained by movements in the real exchange rate...

This paper documents a new fact: the correlation between official development assistance (ODA) and GDP is negatively related to the quality of institutions. This fact reconciles conflicting empirical results about the correlation between ODA and GDP in the literature. For instance, Pallage and...