We show that exported products exit the US market sooner if they violate the Heckscher-Ohlin notion of comparative advantage. Crucially, this pattern is stronger when exporting country has a well-developed banking system, measured by a high ratio of bank credit over the GDP. Banks thus push...

We combine a novel measure of export-related financial needs at the product level with a unique database of firm-product export data (including names of the exporting firms) from five developing countries. Using the tools of survival analysis and taking into account firms' and products'...

This paper analyzes Zambian export patterns using a new transaction-level trade data set for the period 1999-2011. The data show that, in international comparison, Zambian exports are exceptionally concentrated (on mining products). This reliance has been increasing in recent years. Zambia's...

The authors show that exported products exit the US market sooner if they violate the Heckscher-Ohlin notion of comparative advantage. Crucially, this pattern is stronger when exporting country has a well-developed banking system, measured by a high ratio of bank credit over the GDP. Banks thus...

An influential strand of literature starting with the Nobel Prize winning work of Oliver Williamson (1971, 1975) argues that a rational agent underinvests in relationship-specific assets due to the possibility of an opportunistic behaviour on the part of her contractual partner. We first combine...

Can financial institutions and markets enhance the discipline imposed by competitive product markets and thus improve resource allocation in the real economy? We address this question in the context of international trade, using disaggregated product-level data from 71 countries exporting to the...