Cross-country regressions suggest little connection from foreign capital inflows to more rapid economic growth for developing countries and emerging markets. This suggests that the lack of domestic savings is not the primary constraint on growth in these economies, as implicitly assumed in the...

We examine the effects of aid on growth--in cross-sectional and panel data--after correcting for the bias that aid typically goes to poorer countries, or to countries after poor performance. Even after thiscorrection, we find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship...

We explore the connection between money, banks, and aggregate credit. We start with a simple real' model without money, where banks make loans repayable in goods and depositors hold claims on the bank payable on demand in goods. Aggregate production may be delayed in the economy. If so, we show...

India seems to have followed an idiosyncratic pattern of development, certainly compared to other fast-growing Asian economies. While the emphasis on services rather than manufacturing has been widely noted, within manufacturing India has emphasized skill-intensive rather than labor-intensive...

The distance between small firms and their lenders in the United States is increasing. Not only are firms choosing more distant lenders, they are also communicating with them in more impersonal ways. After documenting these systematic changes, we demonstrate that they do not stem from small...

Both investors and borrowers are concerned about liquidity. Investors desire liquidity because they are uncertain about when they will want to eliminate their holding of a financial asset. Borrowers are concerned about liquidity because they are uncertain about their ability to continue to...

Banks can create liquidity because their deposits are fragile and prone to runs. Increased uncertainty can make deposits excessively fragile in which case there is a role for outside bank capital. Greater bank capital reduces liquidity creation by the bank but enables the bank to survive more...

We employ a novel dataset on almost 30,000 trade credit contracts to describe the broad characteristics of the parties that contract together, the key contractual terms such as the discount for early payment and the days by when payment is due. Whereas prior work has typically used information...

Do low interest rates alleviate banking fragility? Banks finance illiquid assets with demandable deposits, which discipline bankers but expose them to damaging runs. Authorities may choose to bail out banks being run. Unconstrained bailouts undermine the disciplinary role of deposits. Moreover,...