Does financial development translate into a comparative advantage in industries that use more external finance? We use industry-level data on firms’ dependence on external finance for 36 industries and 56 countries to examine this question. We show that countries with better-developed financial systems have higher export shares and trade balances in industries that use more external finance. These results are robust to the use of alternative measures of external dependence and financial development and are not due to reverse causality or simultaneity bias.

Universe: 56 countries and 36 industries