Economic models that do not incorporate financial frictions only explain about 70 to 80 percent of the decline in world trade that occurred in the 2008–2009 crisis. We review evidence that shows financial factors also contributed to the great trade collapse and uncover two new stylized facts in support of it. First, we show that the prices of manufactured exports rose relative to domestic prices during the crisis. Second, we show that US seaborne exports and imports, which are likely to be more sensitive to trade finance problems, saw their prices rise relative to goods shipped by air or land.

We study how trade liberalization affects financial and innovation decisions of large firms across major G7 countries. We document how firms increase their cash holdings when their country’s trading partners lower their import tariffs, while we find no effect of a decrease in the country’s own import tariffs. Specifically, we find that the increase in cash holdings occurs before tariff cuts by trading partners and is associated with higher R&D spending and patent filing after the cuts. Our results are consistent with the predictions of a model in which higher expected returns to innovation from enhanced export market access lead to higher cash buffers.

This paper studies the impact of the loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratio regulation – a specific macroprudential policy instrument introduced in Korea – on bank-level lending supply and the subsequent firm-level real consequences. The bank-firm-level matched loan data reveals that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) were particularly hit by adverse lending supply shocks from banks with higher pre-regulation LTD ratios. However, they were compensated by new loans extended by banks with lower pre-regulation LTD ratios as well as unregulated non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs). After all, the regulation did not result in adverse consequences on firm-level net credit or real performance, possibly at the cost of rising corporate loans extended by the shadow banking system.