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A topic of some current interest to forecasters and policymakers is the extent to which the high levels of corporate indebtedness observed throughout the late-1980s contributed to the recession and whether the still substantial debts of the corporate sector are likely to make the recovery from recession slower than normal. The purpose of this note is to present and provide an interpretation of the evidence bearing on this issue.

China's corporate debt has risen sharply since the 2008–09 global financial crisis, although the pace of growth has somewhat moderated due to the authorities' recent financial deleveraging efforts and regulatory tightening. To address the surging debt problem and elevated corporate leverage, comprehensive structural reforms in the corporate, financial, and fiscal sectors are necessary.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the financial structure of non-financial corporations in the European Union prior to the 2008 crisis and to determine whether the ex-ante differences in corporate financial structure had an impact on the severity of the 2008 financial crisis in European countries. The analysis confirms a negative relationship between the corporate debt ratio prior to the crisis and crisis-induced contractions in corporate investment and GDP. The results indicate a greater importance of the growth in corporate indebtedness in the years prior to the crisis for crisis vulnerability than solely the level of debt immediately before the crisis. The paper has several important implications for crisis prevention and mitigation policy.

We offer clarifications on Cooley and Quadrini (2001) regarding financial frictions and risky corporate debt pricing. Even in a frictionless world, the promised rate on corporate debt is not identical across firms and across capital structures and it is not equal to the risk‐free rate. Frictions are unnecessary for credit spreads to arise. Only if the macroeconomy is in actuality risk free or risk neutral do interest rates on corporate debt reflect default probabilities. To the extent that the firm's entire financial structure is traded, a bias in credit spreads introduces an exploitable arbitrage opportunity. Re‐establishing no‐arbitrage, firm dynamics move in the opposite direction to Cooley and Quadrini's.