Using firm-level data for approximately 1,000 bank and nonbank financial institutions in 22 countries over the past 15 years we study the impact of prolonged monetary policy easing on risk-taking behavior. We find that the leverage ratio, as well as other measures of firm-level vulnerability,...

Loose financial conditions forecast high output growth and low output volatility up to six quarters into the future, generating time-varying downside risk to the output gap, which we measure by GDP-at-Risk (GaR). This finding is robust across countries, conditioning variables, and time periods....