This paper examines micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey data which provides direct measures for innovations and firm-specific financial constraints. We find that financial constraints restrain the ability of domestically owned firms to innovate and export and hence to catch up to the technological frontiers. This negative effect is amplified as financial constraints complements.

We examine micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey data which provides direct measures for innovations and firm-specific financial constraints. We find that financial constraints restrain the ability of domestically owned firms to innovate and export and hence to catch up to the technological frontiers. This negative effect is amplified as financial constraints force export and innovation activities to become substitutes although they are generally natural complements.JEL classification: O3, O16, F1, G3

This paper investigates how multinational firms choose their capital structure in response to political risk. We focus on two choice variables, the leverage and the ownership structure of the foreign affiliate, and we distinguish different types of political risk, like expropriation, corruption and confiscatory taxation, and In our theoretical analysis we find that as political risk increases the ownership share always decreases whereas leverage can both increase or decrease, depending on the type of political risk. Using the Microdatabase Direct Investment of the Deutsche Bundesbank, we find supportive evidence for these different effects.

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Multinational firms with operations in high-tax countries can benefit the most from reallocating taxable income to tax havens, though this is sufficiently difficult and costly that only 20.4% of German multinational firms have any tax haven affiliates. Among German manufacturing firms, a 1 percentage point higher foreign tax rate is associated with a 2.3% greater likelihood of owning a tax haven affiliate. This is consistent with tax avoidance incentives and contrasts with earlier evidence for U.S. firms. The relationship is less strong for firms in service industries, possibly reflecting the difficulty of reallocating taxable service income.

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Foreign bank entry is frequently associated with spillover e¤ects for local banks and increasing competition in the local banking market. We study the impact of these e¤ects on host countries. In particular, we ask how these e¤ects interact and how they depend on the competitive environment of the host banking market. An increasing number of banks is more likely to have positive welfare e¤ects the more competitive the market environment, whereas spillovers are less likely to have positive welfare e¤ects the stronger competition. Hence, competitive e¤ects seem to reinforce each other, while spillovers and competition tend to weaken each other.JEL classi…cation: F37, G21, L13, O16