The Qatar Centre for Global Banking & Finance welcomes Professor Moritz Schularick from the University of Bonn to present 'Zombies at large? Corporate debt overhang and the macroeconomy'.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen business leverage rise to record levels, with 'zombie' firms earning just enough funds to continue operating and servicing their debt. This begs the question: how will these extensive business debts affect the economy in years to come?

In this virtual research seminar, Professor Moritz Schularick will discuss the effects extensive corporate debt has on the economy. In particular, using a new long-run dataset of business credit, he will examine whether surges in corporate debt cause recessions to be more severe or persistent.

He will also explore how high debt restructuring costs influence banks' decisions to keep zombie firms afloat.

About the speaker

Moritz Schularick is a Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn, Director of the MacroFinance Lab, and a Principal Investigator in the DFG-Excellence Cluster ECONtribute. Moritz works in the fields of macrofinance, banking and financial stability, as well as international finance, political economy, and economic history. Moritz aims to provide new and innovative perspectives on central questions facing society: the origins of financial stability and excessive risk-taking in financial markets, the link between rising debt and inequality, the effects of monetary policy on asset prices, or the past and future of globalization.

In 2018, Moritz received the Gossen-Prize of German Economic Association, Germany's most important prize for economists. Moritz is also one of the Managing Editors of Europe’s most important policy journal, Economic Policy, a Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and an elected Member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, his hometown.

About the Virtual Seminar Series

The Qatar Centre for Global Banking and Finance's virtual seminar series provides a forum for researchers at Central Banks and Academics working on central banking issues to present their research. Seminars take place fortnightly and last one hour, including time for questions from attendees.