When government expenditures exceed current tax revenues, the resulting deficit must be financed either by issuing bonds, which imply obligations to levy future taxes, or by creating high-powered money. The choice between money and bonds is often thought to be of great moment for both real and...

We use the staggered enactment of anti-recharacterization laws as a plausibly exogenous shock to the value of securitizing collateral through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and test how collateral values impact corporate risk management. Following the laws’ enactment, we find increases in...

Growing evidence suggests that a large share of international trade transactions are made through intermediaries and that whether firms use them or not depends on different factors. In this paper, we investigate whether credit constraints introduce a degree of difference among firms in their...

This paper examines the detrimental consequences of financial market imperfections for international trade. I develop a heterogeneous-firm model with countries at different levels of financial development and sectors of varying financial vulnerability. Applying this model to aggregate trade...

In the first part of this paper we argue that three reforms must be implemented if privatization is to increase efficiency. First, establishing unitary control rights within the firm. Second, making privatized firms face hard budget constraints. Third, establishing a non-corruptible judicial...

Financial variables such as cash flow and cash stocks are robust and quantitatively important explanatory variables for investment at the firm-level. A large body of recent empirical work attributes these findings to capital market imperfections. This interpretation is controversial, however,...