When firms borrow in foreign currency but collect revenues in local currency, exchange rate changes can affect their ability to repay their debt. Using loan-level data from U.S. banks' regulatory filings, this paper studies the effect of exchange rate changes on firms’ loan payments. A 10...

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the banks̕ decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the...

Empirical evidence that migrants send home more remittances after disasters raises the question of whether remittances can be used to self-insure, substituting for both formal and informal insurance. We investigate this question using a unique data set on the usage patterns of financial services...

Modern trade theory emphasizes firm-level productivity differentials to explain the cross-border activities of non-financial firms. This study tests whether a productivity pecking order also determines international banking activities. Using a novel dataset that contains all German banks'...

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are important for employment and economic activity; however, they are perceived to lack adequate financing, which hampers their growth. As a consequence, governments have implemented a number of programs to foster SME lending and attention has focused on...

Banking across borders has risen substantially over the past two decades. Yet there is significant heterogeneity in the international and global activities of banks across countries. This paper develops and tests a theoretical model that explains this variation from an international trade theory...

The Reformation provided a powerful source of legitimacy for secularization of governance and enabled the regional authorities to change the institutional structure to eliminate the inefficiencies under the prevailing (Catholic) regime. We investigate this idea in a simple model of regime change...

Historical events are reflected in asset prices. In this paper, we analyse government bond prices of Germany and Austria traded on the Swiss bourse during WWII. Some war events that are generally considered crucial are clearly reflected in government bond prices. This holds, in particular, for...

The quasi-exogenous division of the French regions Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco- Prussian War allows us to provide evidence about group identity formation within historically homogeneous regions. We use several measures of stated and revealed preferences at the municipal-level in a...

The Protestant Reformation, beginning in 1517, was a first-order economic shock. We document its effects on the sectoral allocation of economic activity in Germany using highly disaggregated data. During the Reformation, particularly in Protestant regions, large numbers of monasteries were...