What are the economic effects of an interest rate cut when an economy is in the midst of a financial crisis? Under what conditions will a cut stimulate output and employment, and raise welfare? Under what conditions will a cut have the opposite e ffects? We answer these questions in a general...

We ask how export demand shocks associated with the Asian financial crisis affected Chinese exporters. We construct firm-specific exchange rate shocks based on the pre-crisis destinations of firms' exports. Because the shocks were unanticipated and large, they are a plausible instrument for...

We introduce quality differentiation and an extensive margin of products into a standard quantitative, general equilibrium model of international trade. Both the quality and the quantity of a product play a role in its contribution both to consumption and to production. The framework allows...

The G20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth builds on the claim that growing imbalances before the 2008 Financial Crisis were a major cause of the crisis, and the further claim that reducing imbalances post crisis must be a central part of any effort to prevent a further...

We show that the negative impact of financial crises on trade is magnified for destinations with longer time-to-ship. A simple model where exporters react to an increase in the probability of default of importers by increasing their export price and decreasing their export volumes to...

We survey recent literature on the causes of the collapse in international trade during the 2008-2009 global recession. We argue that the evidence points to the collapse in aggregate expenditure, concentrated on trade-intensive durable goods, as the main driver of the trade collapse. Inventory...

We identify a new set of stylized facts on the 2008-2009 trade collapse that we hope can be used to shed light on the importance of demand and supply-side factors in explaining the fall in trade. In particular, we decompose the fall in international trade into product entry and exit, price...

This paper examines the role of inventories in the decline of production, trade, and expenditures in the US in the economic crisis of late 2008 and 2009. Empirically, we show that international trade declined more drastically than trade-weighted production or absorption and there was a sizeable...