Global trade and payments data, although absolutely essential to an understanding of the pattern and direction of world commerce, are not completely unambiguous. Compilers of such data face numerous problems of definition and measurement of particular components of nations' aggregate external...

We exploit proprietary information on severed correspondent banking relationships (due to the stricter enforcement of financial crime regulation) to assess how payment disruptions impede cross-border trade. Using firm-level export data from emerging Europe, we show that when local respondent...