This paper documents stylized facts about the evolution of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) between India and the United States over the last four decades. We ask the question: does India-US trade and FDI deviate from its potential i.e. the level that would have been predicted by standard determinants? Using an augmented gravity model and a large sample of countries over 1970-2009, we find that while India's exports to the US are 34% higher than predicted, US exports to India are in line with its potential. Notably, we find strong reversals in the nature of these trading relationships over time. India loses its over-trading status while US turns out to be under-exporting to India in the period after 1990. We also find significant variation in trade performance across product categories. For primary and intermediate goods during post-1990, US exports to India turn significantly below normal. Conducting similar analysis for bilateral FDI flows for the period 1985-2009, we show that while US direct investments in India are in line with predictions based on fundamentals, India has actually been an under-investor in the US market.
International trade collapsed in 2008-09, particularly in countries that experienced a financial crisis. Was this collapse unique or part of a broader historical pattern? Using an augmented gravity model and 179 episodes from 1970-2009, we find that financial crises are associated with sharp declines in imports of the crisis country-19 percent, on average, in the year following a crisis-and this decline is persistent, with imports recovering to their gravity-predicted levels only after 10 years. In contrast, exports of the crisis country fall modestly and then remain close to or even above the predicted level. The protracted drop in imports post-crisis is consistent with evidence of a sustained depreciation of the exchange rate and impaired credit conditions following crises.
This paper explores the link between the political influence of the financial industry and financial regulation in the run-up to the global financial crisis. We construct a detailed dataset documenting the politically targeted activities of the financial industry from 1999 to 2006. The analysis shows that lobbying expenditures by the financial industry were directly linked to the position legislators took on the key bills. Network connections of lobbyists and the financial industry with the legislators were also associated with increased odds of the legislator’s position being in favor of lax regulation. These findings support the view that financial regulation is prone to be influenced by the financial industry.
This paper explores the link between the political influence of the financial industry and financial regulation in the run-up to the global financial crisis. We construct a detailed database documenting the lobbying activities, campaign contributions, and political connections of the financial industry from 1999 to 2006 in the United States. We find strong evidence that spending on lobbying by the financial industry and network connections between lobbyists and the legislators were positively linked to the probability of a legislator changing positions in favor of deregulation. The evidence also suggests that hiring connected lobbyists who had worked for legislators in the past enhanced the effectiveness of lobbying activities.
This paper studies the transmission of monetary shocks to lending rates in a large sample of advanced, emerging, and low-income countries. Transmission is measured by the impulse response of bank lending rates to monetary policy shocks. Long-run restrictions are used to identify such shocks. Using a heterogeneous structural panel VAR, we find that there is wide variation in the response of bank lending rates to a monetary policy innovation across countries. Monetary policy shocks are more likely to affect bank lending rates in the theoretically expected direction in countries that have better institutional frameworks, more developed financial structures, and less concentrated banking systems. Low-income countries score poorly along all of these dimensions, and we find that such countries indeed exhibit much weaker transmission of monetary policy shocks to bank lending rates than do advanced and emerging economies.
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