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The Rise of the Walking Dead: Zombie Firms Around the World

Author

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  • Bruno Albuquerque
  • Roshan Iyer

Abstract

We build a new dataset of listed and private nonfinancial zombie firms for a large set of Advanced Economies and Emerging Markets over the last two decades. We find that the share of these unproductive and unviable firms has been rising worldwide, especially since the GFC and the Covid-19 pandemic. We show that, perhaps surprisingly, the incidence of zombification is lower among private firms. Lower average survival rates of private firms may explain this phenomenon. We find important negative macrofinancial spillovers from zombie firms: nonzombies’ financial performance is persistently reduced in industries populated with a greater number of zombies. To mitigate these effects, we document that countries with stronger banks, and tighter macroprudential policies tend to have fewer zombies and stronger nonzombies. Strengthening the banking sector may, however, not be sufficient if insolvency frameworks are not well-prepared to deal with the restructuring or insolvency of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Albuquerque & Roshan Iyer, 2023. "The Rise of the Walking Dead: Zombie Firms Around the World," IMF Working Papers 2023/125, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2023/125
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Ryan Niladri Banerjee & Aaron Mehrotra & Fabrizio Zampolli, 2024. "Keeping the momentum: how finance can continue to support growth in EMEs," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Keeping the momentum: how finance can continue to support growth in EMEs, volume 127, pages 1-39, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Chakrabarti, Prasenjit & Kaur, Jasmeet, 2024. "Zombie-lending during the pandemic in India: Did the Central Bank reduce credit misallocation concerns of forbearance?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 153-170.
    3. HONDA Tomohito & ONO Arito & UESUGI Iichiro & YASUDA Yukihiro, 2023. "Anatomy of Out-of-court Debt Workouts for SMEs," Discussion papers 23088, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    4. Ricardo Pinheiro Alves & Nuno Tavares & Gabriel Osório de Barros, 2023. "Revisitar as Empresas Zombie em Portugal (2008-2021)," GEE Papers 178, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Oct 2023.
    5. Bruno Albuquerque, 2024. "Corporate debt booms, financial constraints, and the investment nexus," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(5), pages 766-789, August.
    6. Baki Cem Sahin, 2024. "Zombie Firms, Firm-Bank Relationship and Spillover," CBT Research Notes in Economics 2410, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    7. Masashige Hamano & Philip Schnattinger & Mototsugu Shintani & Iichiro Uesugi & Francesco Zanetti, 2025. "Credit Market Tightness and Zombie Firms: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 11640, CESifo.
    8. Kovacs, Oliver, 2024. "Exaptationary Industry 4.0: Graphene as pathfinder?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    9. Giovanni Favara & Camelia Minoiu & Ander Pérez-Orive, 2024. "Zombie Lending to U.S. Firms," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2024-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    10. Yoshibumi Makabe & Tomoyuki Yagi, 2024. "Firms' Interest Payment Burden and Productivity under a Low Interest Rate Environment," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 24-E-20, Bank of Japan.

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