Publications

Young, small, and domestic market-oriented firms are more likely to fall into financial distress.

It is often argued that democracy is the least imperfect form of government mainly because of the existence of a ‘self-correcting’ mechanism stemming...

A sizeable proportion of enterprises, especially SMEs, in receipt of financial assistance from the government will fail to repay. This column asks...

A decade of near-zero, and even negative, interest rates in advanced economies has both encouraged the continued accumulation of debt and a search for...

We use simple accounting measures to estimate the share of private manufacturing firms in financial distress under a hypothetical scenario of losing...

Despite regular reports in the media over the past decade on the imminent death of cash amid rapid innovation in payment technologies, cash in...

We use simple accounting measures to estimate the share of private manufacturing firms in financial distress under a hypothetical scenario of losing...

We explore the dynamics of media chatter about economic reforms using text analysis from about a billion newspaper articles in 28 languages. We show...

Countries reform when their neighbours have reformed too, especially in the aftermath of economic crises. This column examines business regulatory...

More flexible business regulation encourages both the development of startups and the inflow of foreign investment, write Simeon Djankov, Dorina...

We theoretically analyze how index investing affects financial markets using a dynamic exchange economy with heterogeneous investors and two Lucas...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was hoped that warm weather and younger populations would shield many developing countries from the...

This paper explores the effect of oil shocks on electoral outcomes. Using a new polling and election dataset for 207 elections across 50 democracies...

Online transactions bring speed and cost efficiency, fostering the expansion of the real estate market, write Marie Delion and Simeon Djankov.

What will be the political legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic? This column uses data from the 2006-2018 Gallup World Polls to show that epidemic exposure...

What will be the political legacy of the Coronavirus pandemic? We find that epidemic exposure in an individual’s “impressionable years” (ages 18 to 25...