It is obvious that holding city population constant, differences in cities across the world areenormous. Urban giants in poor countries are not large using measures such as land area,interior space or value of output. These differences are easily reconciled mathematically aspopulation is the...

The COVID-19 pandemic altered consumption patterns significantly in a short period of time. However, official inflation statistics take time to reflect these changes in the weights of the CPI consumption basket. Using credit card data for the UK and Germany, we document how consumption patterns...

We study, both empirically and quantitatively, the role of savings and the labor supply inself-insurance channels over the life cycle when one faces not only idiosyncratic income risks, but also changes in longevity risk and pension benefits. We pick China as a case study since China has...

The auto sector is macro-critical in many European countries and constitutes one of the main supply chains in the region. Using a multi-sector and multi-country general equilibrium model, this paper presents a quantitative assessment of the impact of global pandemic-induced labor supply...

This paper assesses external trade statistics in Lao PDR by looking at mirror statistics, and with reference to international experience in compilation and dissemination of external trade data. We find that exports could be underreported by 8 to 50 percent, while imports could be underreported...

While standard demand factors perform well in predicting historical trade patterns, they fail conspicuously in 2020, when pandemic-specific factors played a key role above and beyond demand. Prediction errors from a multilateral import demand model in 2020 vary systematically with the health...

Rising prices and reports of empty shelves in major economies have drawn attention to the functioning of supply chains that normally operate smoothly in the background. Among the issues, the long delays that port congestion may have caused in delivering goods to consumers and firms have been...

The Global Financial Crisis unleashed changes in the operating and regulatory environments for large international banks. This paper proposes a novel taxonomy to identify and track business model evolution for the 30 Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). Drawing from banks' reporting, it...

In this paper we study how competition and financial soundness affect financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We use detailed individual-level survey data, combined with key country-level indicators of bank competition and financial soundness, to study the effect on the adoption of...

Product scope adjustment is a key mechanism through which multi-product firms achieve efficient resource allocations. In this paper, we take a novel perspective to study firms' product scope adjustment behavior through the lens of asset pricing. Using a unique panel scanner data set containing...