This article examines the wage earnings of refugee immigrants in Sweden. Using administrative employer–employee data from 1990 onward, approximately 100,000 refugee immigrants who arrived between 1980 and 1996 and were granted asylum are compared to a matched sample of native-born workers. Employing recentered influence function (RIF) quantile regressions to wage earnings for the period 2011–2015, the occupational-task-based Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition approach shows that refugees perform better than natives at the median wage, controlling for individual and firm characteristics. This overperformance is attributable to female refugee immigrants. Given their characteristics, refugee immigrant females perform better than native females across all occupational tasks studied, including non-routine cognitive tasks. A notable similarity of the wage premium exists among various refugee groups, suggesting that cultural differences and the length of time spent in the host country do not have a major impact.

This paper links banking system development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Based on a sample of 40 African countries from 2000 to 2018, our empirical findings show a significant dependence of current financial institutions on the inherited legal origin and the colonization type. Findings also reveal that current financial legal institutions are not major determinants of banking system development, and that institutional development and governance quality are more important. A high share of government spending relative to GDP also positively affects banking system development in African countries.

This paper focuses on the identification of the causal relationship between central banks' supervisory guidance and individual bank stability. We propose and test the hypothesis that this causal relationship is mediated by the degree to which banks comply with their central bank's corporate governance recommendations. Specifically, we exploit the fact that there is considerable cross-country heterogeneity in providing supervisory guidance. Our recursive two-equation system is equivalent to an endogenous treatment effect model in which the treatment is the provision of supervisory guidance. We find that institutional factors, in particular the legal family of origin, political stability, contract enforcement and strength of investor protection promote provision of supervisory guidance. If a central bank has published supervisory guidance, local banks show better internal governance and higher stability.

We examine firms' motivation to change their main bank and how this switch affects loans, interest payments, and firm performance. Applying treatment effect analysis to unique firm-bank matched Ukrainian data, we find that larger and more highly leveraged companies are more likely to switch their main bank. Importantly, firms tend to switch to a new main bank that holds a higher share of equity in the firm and thus has stronger power. The results also suggest that after switching, firms obtain additional access to bank loans but, on average, have lower profits due to bigger interest payments.

Using the German Community Innovation Survey, we identify financially constrained firms using an ideal test. Contrary to previous studies, we find that the relationship between financial constraints and firm size is characterized by an inverted u-shape and that the group of medium-sized firms has the largest funding gaps. This last finding is explained by the fact that these firms have high innovation capabilities but, at the same time, face high capital costs. Furthermore, we test what consequences funding gaps have for subsequent productivity growth. We find negative effects of funding gaps on productivity, but only for investment in tangible capital, not innovation.

Using a panel of about 6,000 firms from the Mannheim innovation survey, westudy whether stricter bank regulations have changed the funding mix of firms.In particular, we shed light on the question of whether the importance of bank financingfor tangible investments or innovation expenditures has decreased sincestricter regulations were imposed. The results of the multivariate probit modelsshow that the likelihood of using bank loans for financing tangible investmentsor innovation expenditures has not changed following stricter bank regulations.Thus, banks did not, on average, reduce their lending to firms for tangible investmentsor innovation expenditures due to stricter regulatory requirements

Using a panel of about 6,000 firms from the Mannheim innovation survey, we study whether stricter bank regulations have changed the funding mix of firms. In particular, we shed light on the question of whether the importance of bank financing for tangible investments or innovation expenditures has decreased since stricter regulations were imposed. The results of the multivariate probit models show that the likelihood of using bank loans for financing tangible investments or innovation expenditures has not changed following stricter bank regulations. Our results show that the likelihood of using bank loans as a funding source has not changed for tangible investments and innovation investments after stricter capital requirement regulations were announced. However, the probability of using other external funding sources, such as mezzanine capital and overdrafts, has decreased. On the other hand, subsidies have increased due to programs that were implemented in the course of the financial crisis. Strong evidence is found that medium- sized firms use more bank loans than both smaller and larger firms. Furthermore, small and medium-sized enterprises’ productivity has not changed in light of stricter banking regulations. Overall, the impact from funding sources on productivity is rather limited. However, firms that have used mezzanine capital or subsides exhibit significantly lower productivity.