We exploit proprietary information on severed correspondent banking relationships (due to the stricter enforcement of financial crime regulation) to assess how payment disruptions impede cross-border trade. Using firm-level export data from emerging Europe, we show that when local respondent banks lose access to correspondent banking services, their corporate borrowers start to export less. This trade decline occurs on both the extensive and intensive margins, and firms only partially substitute these foregone exports with higher domestic sales. As a result, total firm revenues and employment shrink. These findings highlight an often-overlooked function of global banks: providing the payment infrastructure and trade finance that enables firms in less-developed countries to export to richer parts of the world. 

This paper investigates the impact of organ trafficking on local conflict using georeferenced data on conflict events and hand-collected data on local transplant infrastructure in eight countries known for illegal transplanting. I exploit exogenous variation in kidney demand measured by the number of U.S. waiting list patients, their payment capacity, and their physical condition. Higher kidney demand increases conflict in localities with a transplanting center. Specifically, a one-standard deviation increase in the U.S. waiting list for kidneys leads to a 17% increase in the probability of conflict and a 1% increase in the number of conflict events compared to localities without transplant infrastructure. Consistent with the hypothesis that armed groups use organ trafficking to finance violent attacks, I find that non-state armed groups with transplanting capacities in their home region perform more attacks when kidney demand is higher. These attacks happen both in their home region and in other regions, spreading violence over space. My results further show that higher kidney demand is associated with an increase in suspicious payments from and to countries known for illegal organ trafficking. This corroborates the hypothesis that non-state armed groups finance their attacks by organ trade.

Banks lend more to banks that are similar to them. Using data from the German credit register and proprietary supervisory data on the quality of banks' loan portfolio, we show that a similar portfolio of the lending and borrowing bank helps to overcome information asymmetries in interbank markets. While interbank lenders generally do not adjust their lending to information on the counterparty's portfolio quality, banks with an exposure to similar industries and regions strongly react to this private information. Lending between similar banks is particularly important for borrowers with an opaque loan portfolio, which do not obtain credit from dissimilar peers.

This study presents preliminary evidence that the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is exploited by multinational companies to artificially shift profits between European countries. Specifically, using the EU transaction log and Orbis ownership data, I highlight abnormally high levels of internal trade in emission allowances at year-end—despite the April surrender deadline – within firms under the same Global Ultimate Owner (GUO). This activity is especially marked in transactions involving firms without actual emission certificate needs. Towards the year-end, allowances are moved from subsidiaries in strict accounting jurisdictions to those in lenient ones, indicating regulatory arbitrage. These patterns hint to a potential misuse of the EU ETS for financial manipulation rather than emission reduction.