Reshaping Global Trade: The Immediate and Long-Run Effects of Bank Failures

Wednesday, February 24, 2021
2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
via Zoom

We were pleased to invite you to the second virtual event of the Macro-International Seminar of Spring 2021. The Macro-International seminar hosts speakers from all over the world that present recent and cutting edge research on different topics in macroeconomics, open economy macroeconomics and international finance. The seminar series is co-organized by Prof. Tomás Williams and Prof. Graciela Kaminsky. On Wednesday, February 10, 2021, Chenzi Xu of Stanford Graduate School of Business presented “Reshaping Global Trade: The Immediate and Long-Run Effects of Bank Failures.”

Chenzi Xu studies the first modern global banking crisis that began in London in 1866 and provides causal evidence that financial sector disruptions can reshape international trade patterns for decades. Using newly collected archival loan records that link banks to their operations abroad, Xu estimates that countries exposed to banks whose headquarters in London failed exported 17% less on average to each destination until 1905. Exporters trading with destinations for the first time, facing more competition in goods markets, and with little access to alternative forms of credit experienced more persistent losses, consistent with hysteresis arising from high sunk costs of entry into exporting.

About the Speaker:

Chenzi Xu is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research is focused on the intersection of finance, international trade, and economic history. Xu has received an AB and PhD in Economics at Harvard University as well as a MPhil in Economic and Social History from the University of Cambridge. Through her study, she has received awards and honors such as the 2019 “AQR Top Finance Graduate Award” and the 2018 “Economic History Society New Researcher Prize.”

 

 

This event was co-sponsored with GW Department of Economics.