Zombie-Lending in the United States -- Prevalence versus Relevance
General Economics
2022-07-05 v2 Economics
Abstract
Extraordinary fiscal and monetary interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have revived concerns about zombie prevalence in advanced economies. Within a sample of publicly listed U.S. companies, we find zombie prevalence and zombie-lending not to be a widespread phenomenon per se. Nevertheless, our results reveal negative spillovers of zombie-lending on productivity, capital-growth, and employment-growth of non-zombies as well as on overall business dynamism. It is predominantly the class of healthy small- and medium-sized companies that is sensitive to zombie-lending activities, with financial constraints further amplifying these effects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2201.10524,
title = {Zombie-Lending in the United States -- Prevalence versus Relevance},
author = {Maximilian Göbel and Nuno Tavares},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.10524},
year = {2022}
}