We identify the effect of financial integration on international business cycle synchronization, by utilizing a confidential database on banks' bilateral exposure and employing a country-pair panel instrumental variables approach. Countries that become more integrated over time have less...

We ask whether epidemic exposure leads to a shift in financial technology usage within and across countries and if so who participates in this shift. We exploit a dataset combining Gallup World Polls and Global Findex surveys for some 250,000 individuals in 140 countries, merging them with...

We review the debate on the association of financial globalization with inequality. We show that the within country distributional impact of capital account liberalization is context specific and that different types of flows have different distributional effects. Their overall impact depends on...

We analyze the role of economic and security considerations in bilateral trade agreements. We use the pre-World War I period to test whether trade agreements are governed by pecuniary factors, such as distance and other frictions measured by gravity covariates, or by geopolitical factors. While...

An effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is sometimes suggested, will be to reverse the secular trend toward questioning the value of scientific research and expertise. We analyze this hypothesis by examining how exposure to previous epidemics affected the confidence of individuals in science and...