This era of globalization is characterized by an ongoing international fragmentation of production where the supply chain is split up in more and more parts. The traditional Ricardian theory of trade in products governed by comparative advantages is replaced by a modern theory of trade in tasks....

Based on automated credit lines to more than two million vendors trading on Alibaba’s online retail platform, we show how the take-up of FinTech credit varies with the entrepreneur’s bank distance. Proximity to the branches of the five largest stateowned banks correlates positively with the...