This paper uses a straightforward Resilience Indicator, constructed from a small set of economic and institutional variables, to show that by 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent global shocks, it was possible to identify emerging markets and developing countries that would encounter ...

Using new data from the European Banking Authority on loan recovery outcomes, we examine how variation in loan recovery efficiency affects the transmission of financial sector and overall economic weakness to firm-level financial and real outcomes. We find that firms linked to under-capitalized bank...

This paper examines the impact of international differences in capital regulation on multinational banks’ loan origination location decisions. We find that greater borrower transparency to a local bank establishment makes loan location at this establishment more likely, and that regulatory arbitrage...

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the reallocation of economic activity across firms, and whether this reallocation depends on the competition environment. The paper uses the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys for about 8,000 firms, including both small...

The large divergence in the returns of top-performing star firms and the rest of the economy is substantially reduced when we account for the mismeasurement of intangible capital. Star firms produce and invest more per dollar of invested capital, have more valuable innovations as measured by the mar...

Using administrative universal firm registration data as well as primary offline and online surveys of small business owners in China, we examine (i) whether the digitization of business operations helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) better cope with the pandemic shock, and (ii) if the pandemi...

This paper employs a difference-in-differences approach and a pair of new datasets on government spending and economic activity compiled by the World Bank to examine the local impacts of the Chinese-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan.