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Blog Post
May 19, 2023
Many apologies for the unscheduled break in the Links last Friday. It’s long been a point of pride that, excepting planned holidays, I never miss a Friday. Last week’s sudden absence was—to the best of my recollection—the first since the 24th of June, 2016; as the votes were tallied that morning and...
Blog Post
May 05, 2023
There’s something just perfectly British about having local elections just 48 hours before an obscenely wealthy 70-something puts on a hat made from plundered jewels, sits on an ancient bit of granite and becomes King. The local elections are just about as pure a form of democracy as possible, in wh...
Blog Post
April 28, 2023
Earlier this week, my sister sent a message to the family chat which just read “Harry Belafonte”. At first, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have passed away (surely, he was immortal?), and I just assumed she was randomly thinking about what a genius and a brilliant man he was, so I responded ...
Blog Post
April 26, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp reduction of economic activity in the first months of 2020, which negatively affected the revenues, liquidity, and, potentially, the solvency of many firms. In response to this crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Prog...
WORKING PAPERS
April 26, 2023
This paper finds that shareholders of highly leveraged firms benefit relatively less compared to bondholders from the corporate quantitative easing (QE) announcements by the European Central Bank and the Bank of England in March 2020, as evidence of debt overhang. Firms more heavily impacted by the ...
Blog Post
April 21, 2023
John Mortimer’s third autobiography (he was very long-lived; after each one he found he went through a lot of unexpected life, hence the trilogy) opens with the reflection that the marker of elderliness is the moment you realise you cannot put on your own socks. I think the Rubicon of middle-age is ...
Blog Post
April 14, 2023
I’ve been away for the last couple of Fridays, so this week there is an absolute mass of material to get through this week. I’ve been brutal in editing it down: there are probably ten times as many interesting bits of esoteric statistics, development economics and political commentary from the last ...
Blog Post
April 13, 2023
Debt suspension clauses (DSCs) are having their moment in the international policy arena spotlight. Also known as “pause clauses” or climate-resilient debt clauses, DSCs are mechanisms that allow a country to temporarily suspend debt repayments for a pre-agreed period (generally 1-2 years) if a nat...
Blog Post
March 24, 2023
This week’s edition of The Chronicles of Unpacking is entitled “How much of my lifetime income was spent on all of these books, and why are there never enough shelves?” We’ve been unboxing books over the last four days, and we’re almost finished, but ran out of shelf space some time ago—a few are st...