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Discussion Paper
The Anatomy of Export Controls
Governments increasingly use export controls to limit the spread of domestic cutting-edge technologies to other countries. The sectors that are currently involved in this geopolitical race include semiconductors, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence. Despite their growing adoption, little is known about the effect of export controls on supply chains and the productive sector at large. Do export controls induce a selective decoupling of the targeted goods and sectors? How do global customer-supplier relations react to export controls? What are their effects on the productive sector? ...
Working Paper
Dealer costs and customer choice
We introduce a model to explain how an increase in intermediation costs leads to structural changes in the corporate bond market. We state three facts on corporate bond markets after the Dodd-Frank act: (1) an increase in customer liquidity provision through prearranged matches, (2) a paradoxical decrease in measured illiquidity, and (3) an increase in the illiquidity component on the yield spread. Investors take longer to finish a trade and require higher illiquidity premium even though measured illiquidity decreased. We introduce a search and matching model which explains these facts. It ...
Report
Pirates without Borders: The Propagation of Cyberattacks through Firms’ Supply Chains
We document the supply chain effects of the most damaging cyberattack in history. The disruptions propagated from the directly hit firms to their customers, causing a four-fold amplification of the initial drop in profits. These losses were larger for affected customers with fewer alternative suppliers. Internal liquidity buffers and increased borrowing, mainly through bank credit lines, helped firms navigate the shock. The cyberattack also led to persisting adjustments to the supply chain network, with affected customers more likely to create new relationships with alternative suppliers and ...
Working Paper
The Macroeconomic Implications of CBDC: A Review of the Literature
This paper provides an overview of the literature examining how the introduction of a CBDC would affect the banking sector, financial stability, and the implementation and transmission of monetary policy in a developed economy such as the United States. A CBDC has the potential to improve welfare by reducing financial frictions in deposit markets, by boosting financial inclusion, and by improving the transmission of monetary policy. However, a CBDC also entails noteworthy risks, including the possibility of bank disintermediation and associated contraction in bank credit, as well as potential ...
Working Paper
Serving the Underserved: Microcredit as a Pathway to Commercial Banks
A large-scale microcredit expansion program---together with a credit bureau accessible to all lenders---can enable unbanked borrowers to build a credit history, facilitating their transition to commercial banks. Loan-level data from Rwanda show the program improved access to credit and reduced poverty. A sizable share of first-time borrowers switched to commercial banks, which cream-skim less risky borrowers and grant them larger, cheaper, and longer-maturity loans. Switchers have lower default risk than non-switchers and are not riskier than other bank borrowers. Switchers also obtain better ...
Working Paper
Who Pays For Your Rewards? Redistribution in the Credit Card Market
We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify redistribution between consumers in retail financial markets. Comparing cards with and without rewards, we find that, regardless of income, sophisticated individuals profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers. To probe the underlying mechanisms, we exploit bank-initiated account limit increases at the card level and show that reward cards induce more spending, leaving naive consumers with higher unpaid balances. Naive consumers also follow a sub-optimal balance-matching heuristic when repaying their credit ...