Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which...

"We show that an ostensibly disparate set of stylized facts regarding firm pricing behavior can arise in a Ricardian model with Bertrand competition. Generalizing the Bernard, Eaton, Jenson, and Kortum (2003) model allows firms' markups over marginal cost to fall under trade liberalization, but...

We join the new trade theory with a model of choice between bank and bond financing to show the differential effects of financial policy on the distribution of firm size, welfare, aggregate output, gains from trade, and the real exchange rate in a small open economy. Increasing bank efficiency...

It is a well known quandry that when countries open their financial sectors, foreign-owned banks appear to bring superior efficiency to their host markets but also charge higher markups on borrowed funds than their domestically owned rivals, with unknown impacts on interest rates and welfare....

In his papers during the lead up to the birth of the European Monetary Union, Obstfeld considered whether the countries forming the EMU were sufficiently similar to survive a single monetary policy--and more importantly, whether they had the capacity to adjust to asymmetric shocks given a single...

Using data over more than a century, we show that shifts in the location of manufacturing industries are a domestic reflection of what the international trade literature refers to as the product cycle in a cross-country context, with industries spawning in high-wage areas with larger pools of...