When trading, firms choose between different payment contracts. As shown theoretically in Schmidt-Eisenlohr (forthcoming), this allows firms in international trade to optimally trade-off differences in financing costs and enforcement across countries. This paper provides evidence from a large...

Trade credit is the most important form of short-term finance for U.S. firms. In 2017, non-financial firms had about $3 trillion in trade credit outstanding equaling 20 percent of U.S. GDP. Why do sellers lend to their buyers in the presence of a well-developed financial sector? This paper...

Shipping goods internationally is risky and takes time. To allocate risk and to finance the time gap between production and sale, a range of payment contracts is utilized. I study the optimal choice between these payment contracts considering one shot transactions, repeated transactions and...

Most domestic and international firm-to-firm transactions rely on trade credit, where sellers grant buyers time to pay the invoice after delivery. Exploiting Chilean and Colombian transaction-level trade data, this paper documents new facts about trade credit use: trade credit use increases with...

Trade credit is the most important form of short-term finance for firms. In 2019, U.S. nonfinancial firms had about $4.5 trillion in trade credit outstanding equaling 21 percent of U.S. GDP. This paper documents two striking facts about trade credit use. First, firms with higher markups supply...

Shipping goods internationally is risky and takes time. To allocate risk and to finance the time gap between production and sale, a range of payment contracts is utilized. I study the optimal choice between these payment contracts and their implications for trade. The equilibrium contract is...

Most domestic and international firm-to-firm transactions rely on trade credit, where sellers grant buyers time to pay the invoice after delivery. Exploiting Chilean and Colombian transaction-level trade data, this paper documents new facts about trade credit use: trade credit use increases with...

Using a unique confidential data set with industry disaggregation of official U.S. claims and liabilities, we find that dollar-denominated securities are increasingly inter-mediated by tax havens financial centers (THFC) and by less regulated funds. These securities are risky and respond to...

Using a unique confidential data set with industry disaggregation of official U.S. claims and liabilities, we find that dollar-denominated securities are increasingly inter-mediated by tax havens financial centers (THFC) and by less regulated funds. These securities are risky and respond to tax...

This study provides evidence that shocks to the supply of trade finance have a causal effect on U.S. exports. The identification strategy exploits variation in the importance of banks as providers of letters of credit across countries. The larger a U.S. bank's share of the trade finance market...