The paper investigates the financial vulnerability of non-financial firms during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic crisis. In particular, it evaluates the extent to which firms may run into a liquidity crisis following the COVID-19 outbreak and the impact of stylised policy measures to reduce...

This paper investigates the likelihood of corporate insolvency and the potential implications of debt overhang of non-financial corporations induced by economic shock associated with the outbreak of COVID-19. Based on simple accounting models, it evaluates the extent to which firms deplete their...

Recent technological developments linked to secure messaging and traceability present an opportunity to address certain challenges in international and domestic payment systems. From an international perspective, foreign exchange markets remain costly and relatively less efficient than domestic...

Intangible assets are an important driver of productivity and ultimately output growth. Yet, despite their aggregate rise in the past decades, productivity has continued to grow modestly in the majority of OECD countries. This is in part because many firms – particularly young and small ones -...

The paper analyses the role of loan guarantee programmes following the COVID-19 outbreak in alleviating firm distress as well as their broader impacts on productivity via reallocation, relying on a simulation model and econometric estimations. The simulation exercise relies on a simple cash-flow...

This paper provides new evidence on the linkages between a large array of institutional arrangements (on product, labour and financial markets) and employment performance. Our analysis includes unemployment, inactivity and jobless rates, thus allowing us to control for possible substitution...

This paper analyses employment dynamics across firms during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of job retention schemes (JRS) in shaping these dynamics. It relies on a novel collection of high-frequency harmonised micro-aggregated statistics, computed using administrative data on employment and...