In the absence of financial frictions, the purpose of thin capitalization rules is to limit multinational firms’ possibilities of engaging in tax planning via debt shifting. This paper analyzes the effects of thin capitalization rules in the case where firms have limited access to external...

Estimates of the trade elasticity based on actual trade policy changes are scarce, and the few that exist are all over the place. This paper offers a setting where an exogenous increase in a border tax can be used to estimate the trade elasticity. It shows theoretically and empirically that if...

Language is a strong and robust determinant of international trade patterns: Countries sharing a common language trade significantly more with each other than countries using different languages, holding other factors constant. In this paper, we show that this trade-promoting effect of language...

This study finds that even small unexpected supply shocks propagate downstream through production networks and are amplified by firms with short-term financial constraints. The unexpected 2011 increase in the tax on imports purchased with foreign-sourced trade credit is examined using data...