The empirical gravity literature finds geographical distance to be a large and growing obstacle to trade, contradicting the popular notion that globalization heralds "the end of geography". This distance puzzle disappears, however, when measuring the effect of cross-border distance relative to...

This paper investigates the impact of bank competition in Sub-Saharan Africa on bank non-performing loans, a measure of credit risk. Using bank-level data for a sample of 221 banks from 33 countries over the period 2000-15, we find a non-linear or U-shaped relationship between bank competition...

This paper investigates how the prolonged period of low interest rates affects bank intermediation activity. We use data for 113 large international banks headquartered in 14 major advanced economies during the period 1994-2015. We find that low interest rates induce banks to shift their...