Hence, barriers to international integration are more binding for small and mid-sized firms than for their larger – and more productive – counterparts. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  3. High levels of debt weaken resilience Let me come to the second factor that affects resilience – the level of debt. Here, crisis legacies still weigh on the world economy.
Debt levels in the private and public sector remain high. At the end of 2013, world total debt (ex-financials) stood at over 210% of global GDP, up from about 160% at the beginning of the 2000s (Buttiglione et al., 2014).