We study the role of inventories for the volatility of international trade and the propagation of business cycles. We build a model of international trade in which intermediaries have a precautionary motive to hold inventories. With either productivity or demand shocks, we find inventories...

We first study export dynamics in a number of large devaluation episodes in emerging markets. Using plant level data, we document that exports expand gradually following a large devaluation primarily because the number of exporters expands gradually. We further show the strong negative...

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of the aggregate and distributional impacts of economy-wide microfinance or other credit programs targeted toward small-scale entrepreneurs. In our analysis, we find that the redistributive impacts of microfinance are stronger in general-equilibrium,...

We study a model where households use home equity to finance consumption expenditures and we analyze the macroeconomic consequences of a credit crunch triggered by tightening lending standards.