We use anonymized data from Facebook to construct a new measure of the pairwise social connectedness between 180 countries and 332 European regions. We find that two countries trade more with each other when they are more socially connected and when they share social connections with a similar...

We develop a structural model of the global banking network and analyze its role in facilitating risk sharing and amplifying shocks across countries and over time. Using bilateral international lending data, we uncover significant heterogeneity in the willingness and capacity of banks to provide...

Do digital payment technologies generate liquidity premia like cash and Treasury? We provide an estimate in the context of the world's largest digital payment platform, Alipay. Our empirical strategy exploits the variation in the timing of the introduction of money market funds that users on...

Governments face a trade-off between insuring bondholders and taxpayers. If the government fully insures bondholders by manufacturing risk-free zero-beta debt, then it cannot also insure taxpayers against permanent macroeconomic shocks over long horizons. Instead, taxpayers will pay more in...

I propose a model of the reserve currency paradigm that centers on liquidity demand for safe assets. In global recessions, the demand for U.S. safe assets increases and raises their convenience yields, giving rise to stronger dollar and countercyclical seigniorage revenues. The seigniorage...