Using a new dataset on sectoral credit exposures covering financial and non-financial sectors in 115 economies over the period 1940-2014, we document the following evidence that corporate debt plays a key role in explaining boom-bust cycles, financial crises, and slow macroeconomic recoveries:...

Xu (2022) estimates the causal impact of bank failures on the level of trades with a staggered difference-in-differences design and an IV strategy with Bartik instrument, using the 1866 banking crisis as a quasi-natural experiment. Findings, based on historical data on the trades and loans...

We study how financial development affects economic development and wage inequality. We use a large expansion of government-owned banks into Brazilian cities with low bank branch coverage and combine it with data on the universe of employees from 2000-2014. We find that higher financial...

I study the first modern global banking crisis that began in London in 1866 and provide causal evidence that financial sector disruptions can reshape international trade patterns for decades. Using newly collected archival loan records that link banks to their operations abroad, I estimate that...