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Working Paper
The Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations in a Credit Network Economy
I show that inter-firm lending plays an important role in business cycle fluctuations. I first build a tractable network model of the economy in which trade in intermediate goods is financed by supplier credit. In the model, a financial shock to one firm affects its ability to make payments to its suppliers. The credit linkages between firms propagate financial shocks, amplifying their aggregate effects by about 30 percent. To calibrate the model, I construct a proxy of inter-industry credit flows from firm- and industry-level data. I then estimate aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks to ...
Working Paper
The Role of Regulation and Bank Competition in Small Firm Financing: Evidence from the Community Reinvestment Act
This paper analyzes how bank regulation that promotes greater access to credit impacts the financing of targeted small firms. It develops a model where banks compete with trade creditors to fund small firms and applies it to study the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The empirical tests reveal that a CRA-induced increase in bank loans reduces small firms’ use of relatively expensive trade credit. The effect is more profound in low- and medium-income areas where financial constraints are tighter due to low bank competition. The effect is also larger for small firms that ...
Journal Article
Trade, globalization and the financial crisis
The financial crisis that began in August 2007 and intensified in the fall of 2008 pushed the global economy into a severe downturn that some have called the Great Recession. The decline in trade and the protectionist instincts that invariably come to the fore in difficult economic times have raised concerns that today's crisis may lead to deglobalization. ; We will illustrate the crisis' impact on world trade and examine the typical patterns of international trade over the business cycle. We urge caution in using trade data to estimate the extent of globalization or deglobalization. And we ...
Working Paper
Trade Credit, Markups, and Relationships
Trade credit is the most important form of short-term finance for firms. In 2019, U.S. non-financial firms had about $4.5 trillion in trade credit outstanding equaling 21 percent of U.S. GDP. This paper documents two striking facts about trade credit use. First, firms with higher markups supply more trade credit. Second, trade credit use increases in relationship length, as firms often switch from cash in advance to trade credit but rarely away from trade credit. These two facts can be rationalized in a model where firms learn about their trading partners, sellers charge markups over ...