No guarantees, no trade: How banks affect export patterns

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Niepmann, Friederike; Schmidt-Eisenlohr, Tim
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2017.07.007
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 338-350
• 关键词: Trade finance; global banks; Letter of credit; exports; Financial shocks

摘要

Employing new data on U.S. banks' trade-finance claims by country, this paper estimates the effect of letter of-credit supply shocks on U.S. exports. We show that a one-standard deviation negative shock to a country's letter-of-credit supply reduces U.S. exports to that country by 1.5 percentage points. This effect is driven by countries that are small and where few banks are active. It more than doubles during the 2007-09 crisis. The provision of letters of credit is highly concentrated and banks are geographically specialized. Therefore, shocks to individual banks can have sizable effects in the aggregate and affect trade patterns. Published by Elsevier B.V.