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The allocation of credit by banks and financial institutions on 'soft' terms to friends and relatives rather than on the basis of 'hard' market criteria in the years leading up to the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 has been widely noted. Using a detailed dataset on Thai firms prior to the crisis period we examine whether business connections were in fact a good predictor of preferential access to long term bank credit. We find that firms with connections to banks and politicians had greater access to long-term debt than firms without such ties. Connected firms need much less collateral to obtain long term loans than those without connections.Such firms obtain more long term loans, and appear to use less short term loans. We do not find support for the existence of connections between banks and firms serving to reduce asymmetric information problems. Our results thus lend support to the hypothesis that the presence of connections was the most important factor determining access to long term bank debt prior to the financial crisis and are consistent with recent research implicating weak corporate governance in the extent and severity of the crisis.JEL Classification: G30, G32

We combine data on international trade linkages with network methods to examine the global trading system as an interdependent complex network. We map the topology of the international trade network, and suggest new network-based measures of international economic integration, at both a global system-wide level and a local country level. We develop network-based measures that incorporate not only the volume of trade but also the influence that a country has on the international trading system. These measures incorporate the structure and function of the network, and may provide a more meaningful approach to globalization than current measures based on trade volumes. We find that, in terms of participation and influence in the network, global trade is hierarchical, with a core–periphery structure at higher levels of trade, though integration of smaller countries into the network increased considerably over the 1990s. The network is strongly ‘balkanized’ according to geography of trading partners, but not as strongly by income or legal origin. Using these new measures we find that a country's position in the network has substantial implications for economic growth. We therefore suggest that a network approach to international economic integration has potential for useful applications in international business, finance and development. Journal of International Business Studies (2007) 38, 595–620. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400286

"We combine data on international trade linkages with a network approach to map the global trading system as an interdependent complex network. This enables us to obtain indicators of how well connected a country is into the global trading system. We use these network-based measures of connectedness to explain stock market returns during recent episodes of financial crisis. We find that a crisis is amplified if the epicenter country is better integrated into the trade network. However, target countries affected by such a shock are in turn better able to dissipate the impact if they are well integrated into the network. A network approach can help explain why the Mexican, Asian, and Russian financial crises were highly contagious, while the crises that originated in Venezuela and Argentina did not have such a virulent effect. We suggest that a network approach incorporating the cascading and diffusion of interdependent ripples when a shock hits a specific part of the global trade network provides us with an improved explanation of financial contagion." ("JEL" F10, "F36", F40, "G15") Copyright (c) 2009 Western Economic Association International.

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How do the number of trade partners and the concentration of trade among partners affect the economic growth of a country? We refer to these characteristics as the structure of trade, and explore this question empirically in this study. We find that the structure of trade, independently of the level of trade itself, has an important effect on the rate of economic growth. The results of the study suggest that the number of trading partners is positively correlated with growth across all countries, and this effect is more pronounced for rich countries. Trade concentration is positively correlated with growth for all countries, and the effect is concentrated in poor countries. Previous work has overlooked these characteristics of trade, although we find them to be quite relevant and that they could lead to new ways of understanding the trade�-�growth relationship.Trade, growth, trade structure, trade concentration,

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