We examine the relationship between real and financial integration. Real integration is measured by productivities of capital and labor from trade data for 1982 to 1997. Financial integration is measured by the black market exchange rate. We find more evidence of convergence to equality for...

We quantify the sovereign-bank doom loop by using the 1999 Marmara earthquake as an exogenous shock leading to an increase in Turkey’s default risk. Our theoretical model illustrates that for banks with higher exposure to government securities, a higher sovereign default risk implies lower net...

Linder (1961) conjectured that taste differences could impede trade flows. We extend Krugman (1980) to allow for producers that face taste heterogeneity with volatile demand. Consumers are characterized by different taste over product attributes and idiosyncratic risk. Firms face a portfolio...

This study investigates the implications of cross-country differences in banking regulation and supervision for the international subsidiary locations and risk of U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs). We find that U.S. BHCs are more likely to operate subsidiaries in countries with weaker...

Using data from the Multinational Time Use Study, this paper documents the trends and levels of time allocation, with a focus on home hours, for a relatively large set of industrialized countries during the past 50 years. Three patterns emerge. First, home hours have decreased in both the United...

In the United States and the European Union (EU), political incentives to oppose cross-border banking have been strong in spite of the measurable benefits to the real economy from breaking down geographic barriers. Even a federal-level supervisor and safety net are not by themselves sufficient...

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost minimization and measure each firm’s liquidity shortfall during and...

We document and evaluate how businesses are reacting to the COVID-19 crisis through August 2020. First, on net, firms see the shock (thus far) largely as a demand rather than supply shock. A greater share of firms reports significant or severe disruption to sales activity than to supply chains....