There is a growing need for investments in hospital facilities to improve the efficiency and quality of health services. In recent years, publicly financed hospital organisations in many countries have utilised private finance arrangements, variously called private finance initiatives (PFIs),...

This review study explores the available data relating to the impact of financial crisis and subsequently applied austerity measures on the health care, social services and health promotion policies in Greece.

In this paper, we examine whether pre-crisis leading indicators help explain pressures on the exchange rate (and its volatility) during the global financial crisis. We use a unique data set that covers 149 countries and 58 indicators, and estimation techniques that are robust to model...

The Indian banking system was initially thought to be insulated from the global financial crisis owing to heavy public ownership and cautious management. It was thus a surprise when some banks experienced deposit flight, as depositors shifted their money toward government-owned banks and...

This study investigates the relationship between leverage ratios and bank share performance for a sample of Japanese banks during the period of financial crisis in the late 1990s. We differentiate between two types of leverage ratios: book leverage and market leverage. We show that market...

A sharp decline in inventory investment was an important contributor to the economic slowdown in Australia in 2008/09. I identify the extent to which this was due to a tightening in short-term credit constraints. In an experimental design setting, I identify the causal effect of short-term...

This paper highlights the impact of credit supply and aggregate demand sensitivity on 91 US industries stock performance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. We account explicitly for changes in the market model and investigate, next to stock returns, the changes in systematic risk and...

Unlike my distinguished fellow panelists, I am not the head of a central bank. So I take my marching orders from the conference organizers. In this case, they asked me to ruminate on the extent to which central banks’ independence and credibility have been affected by their actions during the...

The stunning events of 2007-2009 both shook the world and piqued interest in economics. In the 30-plus years that I have been teaching macro principles, I have never seen the level of interest in students as high as what I observed last year rapt attention and no sleepers! Interest in economics...

Measured total factor productivity often declines sharply during financial crises. In 1982, the Chilean manufacturing sector suffered a severe contraction in output, most of which can be accounted for by a falling Solow residual. This paper uses establishment data from the Chilean manufacturing...