Academics and practitioners are increasingly concerned about global zombieism, a term used to describe insolvent firms that survive with the support of financial institutions, investors, or governments, particularly during unusual market conditions. Using dual-filters of interest coverage ratio and an empirically validated default prediction model, we propose a new measure to gauge the extent of zombieism in the world’s 20 largest economies. The average zombie share of listed firms has increased significantly since 1990, to about 7% in 2020. Zombie firms are typically found among small and medium-sized enterprises. Economic growth, industry compositions, and lenient monetary policies have strong explanatory power for global zombieism. We show that the presence of zombie firms generates significant market congestion, limiting the growth of healthy firms. We also find that the development of global corporate bond markets contributes to zombie firm growth. Leveraging staggered bankruptcy reforms as an exogenous variation, we find that these reforms lower zombie ratio by 1.4% points. The reduction is more substantial if the bankruptcy law becomes more creditor-friendly. Having failed to recover, zombie firms can survive for an average of 5 years before declaring bankruptcy, being delisted, or being acquired. Bankruptcy reforms accelerate the dissolution of zombie status.

学者和从业者越来越关注全球僵尸主义，这个术语用来描述在金融机构、投资者或政府的支持下生存的无力偿债的公司，特别是在不寻常的市场条件下。使用利息覆盖率的双重过滤器和经过实证验证的默认预测模型，我们提出了一种新的衡量方法来衡量世界 20 个最大经济体的僵尸主义程度。自1990年以来，上市公司的平均僵尸企业比例大幅上升，到2020年将达到7%左右。僵尸企业通常出现在中小企业中。经济增长、产业结构、宽松的货币政策对全球僵尸主义有很强的解释力。我们表明，僵尸企业的存在会造成严重的市场拥堵，限制健康企业的增长。我们还发现，全球公司债券市场的发展有助于僵尸企业的增长。利用分期破产改革作为外生变量，我们发现这些改革将僵尸比率降低了 1.4 个百分点。如果破产法变得更加有利于债权人，那么减少的金额就会更大。如果无法恢复，僵尸企业平均可以生存5年，然后宣布破产、退市或被收购。破产改革加速僵尸地位的消解。