Global trade contracted quickly and severely during the global crisis. This paper uses a unique dataset of French firms to match export data to firm-level credit constraints and shows that most of the 2008–2009 trade collapse was due to the unprecedented demand shock and to product...

Most independent nations today were part of empires in 1945. Using bilateral trade data from 1948 to 2006, we examine the effect of independence on post-colonial trade. While there is little short-run effect on trade, after four decades trade with the metropole (colonizer) has contracted by...

Free trade in audio-visual services has faced opposition on the grounds that foreign media undermine domestic culture, and ultimately, global diversity. Using a long panel of French birth registries, we assess the media-culture link using name frequencies as a measure of tastes. Controlling for...