Economists are skeptical about the economic benefits of hosting quot;mega-eventsquot; such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup, since such activities have considerable cost and seem to yield few tangible benefits. These doubts are rarely shared by policy-makers and the population, who are...

This paper shows that proximity to major international financial centers seems to reduce business cycle volatility. In particular, we show that countries that are further from major locations of international financial activity systematically experience more volatile growth rates in both output...

quot;Debt overhangquot; models have motivated the possibility of Pareto-improving quot;market-based debt-reduction schemesquot; under an assumption of creditor seizure in bad states. These models usually reach the conclusion that while pure debt forgiveness is in the interest of debtor nations,...

We investigate the implications of extra-normal government spending under COVID-19 for commercial bank lending growth between 2019Q4 and 2020Q4 in a sample of 3000 banks from 71 countries. We control for pre-pandemic structural factors, bank characteristics and government debt. To address the...

We investigate the implications of extra-normal government spending under the COVID-19 pandemic for commercial bank lending growth between 2019Q4 and 2020Q4 in a large sample of over 3000 banks from 71 countries. We control for pre-pandemic structural factors, bank characteristics and government...