Trade Finance and Trade

The recent evidence that financial frictions distort trade is typically indirect because no systematic data on the use of trade finance, credit and insurance has been available. A research project by Marc Auboin, Erdal Yalcin and Kalina Manova aims at providing more direct evidence, using the unique Berne Union data. The project, in cooperation with the Berne Union of Trade Credit and Investment Insurers, hopes to establish the causal links between trade credit/insurance and trade flows at the sector level.

A paper by Marc Auboin and Martina Engemann (2013) has already revealed the existence of a causal link of the availability of trade credit on trade through a whole economic cycle. Berne Union data used in this project will be further refined under the current project, with support from Ifo's Economic and Business Data Centre.

Marc Auboin is Counsellor at the World Trade Organization, where he is responsible for the Trade and Finance agenda, "Coherence", with other international organisations. He has held previous positions at the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the French Ministry of Economics and Finance. He is currently part-time Lecturer at the University of Bern, MILE Program, World Trade Institute, and at CERDI (France), GPE program, World Bank Training Institute.

Mr Auboin holds a PhD in Economics from Sciences-Po Paris. His thesis, supervised by Pr. Raymond Barre, was on "financial innovations and monetary policies in France, the UK and the USA". He was also a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Yale University. His well-populated publication list contains numerous articles published by the World Trade Organization. He is also a frequent contributor to VoxEU.