Firm Dynamics, Financing and Aggregate Productivity

Firm Dynamics, Financing and Aggregate Productivity PDF Author: Huiyu Li
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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(Chapter 1. Leverage and Productivity Financial frictions can reduce aggregate productivity) in particular when firms with high productivity cannot borrow against their earnings. This paper investigates the quantitative importance of this form of borrowing constraint using a large panel of firms in Japan. The firms are young and unlisted, precisely the firms for which credit frictions are expected to be the most severe. In this data, I find that firm leverage (asset-to-equity ratio) and firm output-to-capital ratios rise with firm productivity, both over time in a firm and across firms of the same age and cohort. I use these facts in indirect inference to estimate a standard general equilibrium model where financial frictions arise from the limited pledgeability of earnings and assets. In this model more financially constrained firms have higher output-to-capital ratios. The model matches the two facts the best when firms can pledge the equivalent of over half of their one-year-ahead earnings and one-fifth of their assets. Compared to the common assumption that firms can pledge only assets, aggregate productivity loss due to financing frictions is one-third smaller when earnings are also pledgeable to the degree seen in Japan. (Chapter 2. Income fluctuation problem) This paper studies the income fluctuation problem without imposing bounds on utility, assets, income or consumption. We prove that the Coleman operator is a contraction mapping over the natural class of candidate consumption policies when endowed with a metric that evaluates consumption differences in terms of marginal utility. We show that this metric is complete, and that the fixed point of the operator coincides with the unique optimal policy. As a consequence, even in this unbounded setting, policy function iteration always converges to the optimal policy at a geometric rate. (Chapter 3. Errorbounds) This paper derives explicit error bounds for numerical policies of $\eta$-concave stochastic dynamic programming problems, without assuming the optimal policy is interior. We demonstrate the usefulness of our error bound by using it to pinpoint the states at which the borrowing constraint binds in a widely used income fluctuation problem with standard calibrations and a firm production problem with financial constraints.

Firm Dynamics, Financing and Aggregate Productivity

Firm Dynamics, Financing and Aggregate Productivity PDF Author: Huiyu Li
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
(Chapter 1. Leverage and Productivity Financial frictions can reduce aggregate productivity) in particular when firms with high productivity cannot borrow against their earnings. This paper investigates the quantitative importance of this form of borrowing constraint using a large panel of firms in Japan. The firms are young and unlisted, precisely the firms for which credit frictions are expected to be the most severe. In this data, I find that firm leverage (asset-to-equity ratio) and firm output-to-capital ratios rise with firm productivity, both over time in a firm and across firms of the same age and cohort. I use these facts in indirect inference to estimate a standard general equilibrium model where financial frictions arise from the limited pledgeability of earnings and assets. In this model more financially constrained firms have higher output-to-capital ratios. The model matches the two facts the best when firms can pledge the equivalent of over half of their one-year-ahead earnings and one-fifth of their assets. Compared to the common assumption that firms can pledge only assets, aggregate productivity loss due to financing frictions is one-third smaller when earnings are also pledgeable to the degree seen in Japan. (Chapter 2. Income fluctuation problem) This paper studies the income fluctuation problem without imposing bounds on utility, assets, income or consumption. We prove that the Coleman operator is a contraction mapping over the natural class of candidate consumption policies when endowed with a metric that evaluates consumption differences in terms of marginal utility. We show that this metric is complete, and that the fixed point of the operator coincides with the unique optimal policy. As a consequence, even in this unbounded setting, policy function iteration always converges to the optimal policy at a geometric rate. (Chapter 3. Errorbounds) This paper derives explicit error bounds for numerical policies of $\eta$-concave stochastic dynamic programming problems, without assuming the optimal policy is interior. We demonstrate the usefulness of our error bound by using it to pinpoint the states at which the borrowing constraint binds in a widely used income fluctuation problem with standard calibrations and a firm production problem with financial constraints.

From Firm Productivity Dynamics to Aggregate Efficiency

From Firm Productivity Dynamics to Aggregate Efficiency PDF Author: Bernabe Lopez-Martin
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Languages : en
Pages :

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The author constructs a quantitative framework to evaluate how financial constraints can reduce productivity growth at the firm level and result in lower aggregate productivity. The author considers a model where firms are able to invest in innovation in order to increase their productivity, or knowledge capital. This investment is a costly and uncertain enterprise. As the capacity to obtain external funds is diminished, resources allocated to this effort will be reduced due to different mechanisms at work. First, the return of this investment in the case of success may be diminished by the inability to quickly increase production capacity if the credit necessary to do so is scarce (i.e., if entrepreneurs cannot rent the optimal level of physical capital). Second, financial constraints reduce profits obtained by entrepreneurs and therefore the amount of assets they are able to accumulate in every period. Finally, financially underdeveloped economies will be characterized by a lower average ability of entrepreneurs. This is due to the lower equilibrium wage in the economy, which results in a larger mass of individuals opting to set up firms. In the margin, these individuals tend to have lower ability to manage a firm and relatively low prospects of generating firm productivity growth through innovation.

Financial Frictions, Firm Dynamics and the Aggregate Economy

Financial Frictions, Firm Dynamics and the Aggregate Economy PDF Author: Juan Carlos Ruiz-García
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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The Economics of Firm Productivity

The Economics of Firm Productivity PDF Author: Carlo Altomonte
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108489230
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Provides empirical evidence on how firm-level data can help governments strike the right policy balance and ultimately achieving higher aggregate productivity.

Bankruptcy and Firm Dynamics

Bankruptcy and Firm Dynamics PDF Author: Jose Daniel Rodríguez-Delgado
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451962932
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
Financial frictions have been documented as an important determinant of firm dynamics. In this paper I model bankruptcy procedures, liquidation in particular, as an institutional feature that affects both sides of financial transactions. I construct a model of firm dynamics that generate endogenous borrowing limits and I find that a) inefficient bankruptcy procedures can have quantitatively important aggregate effects, but more importantly; b) that such effects would not be directly visible in the firms that industrial censuses and surveys focus on. I conclude that to capture the effects of the legal framework we need to look beyond the existing firms.

Essays on Financial Frictions and Aggregate Dynamics

Essays on Financial Frictions and Aggregate Dynamics PDF Author: David Laszlo Zeke
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This dissertation studies the effects of firm debt and financing frictions on the macroeconomy. Chapter 1 investigates the role of changes in firms' idiosyncratic risk and their cost of default in driving changes in employment and credit spreads, both over the business cycle and in the cross-section. I use firm-level panel data and a structural model of financial frictions and volatility shocks to assess the effects of shocks to firm volatility and default costs. I find that volatility shocks alone can only generate modest declines in aggregate employment. However, simultaneous shocks to firm volatility and default costs can interact to generate large employment declines. Chapter 2, co-authored with Robert Kurtzman, investigates the role of changes in the allocation of labor and capital between firms in driving productivity dynamics. This chapter presents accounting decompositions of changes in aggregate labor and capital productivity. Our simplest decomposition breaks changes in an aggregate productivity ratio into two components: A mean component, which captures common changes to firm factor productivity ratios, and a dispersion component, which captures changes in the variance and higher order moments of their distribution. We demonstrate that in standard models of production with heterogeneous firms, our dispersion component reflects changes in distortions to the allocation of labor and capital between firms. We find, for public firms in the United States and Japan, that the dispersion component plays a minor role in productivity changes over the business cycle. Chapter 3, co-authored with Robert Kurtzman, investigates the role of debt overhang, an agency problem between firms' equity holders and creditors, in distorting firm growth and aggregate welfare. This chapter addresses this question through the lens of a general equilibrium model of firm dynamics and endogenous innovation in which debt overhang affects the firm innovation decision and subsequent firm growth. The estimated model implies that while the private gains to a firm from resolving debt overhang can be large if it faces sufficient default risk, the social gains to long-run productivity and output are relatively modest. The time-varying distribution of firm default risk suggests social gains may be greater during recessions.

Firm Productivity, innovation and Financial Development

Firm Productivity, innovation and Financial Development PDF Author: Ms.Genevieve Verdier
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451963254
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
How do firm-specific actions-in particular, innovation-affect firm productivity? And what is the role of the financial sector in facilitating higher productivity? Using a rich firm-level dataset, we find that innovation is crucial for firm performance as it directly and measurably increases productivity. Moreover, its effects on productivity are mediated through the financial sector; firms reap the maximum benefits from innovation in countries with well-developed financial sectors. This effect is particularly important for firms in high-tech sectors, which typically have higher external financing needs.

Credit Supply and Productivity Growth

Credit Supply and Productivity Growth PDF Author: Francesco Manaresi
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498315917
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
We study the impact of bank credit on firm productivity. We exploit a matched firm-bank database covering all the credit relationships of Italian corporations, together with a natural experiment, to measure idiosyncratic supply-side shocks to credit availability and to estimate a production model augmented with financial frictions. We find that a contraction in credit supply causes a reduction of firm TFP growth and also harms IT-adoption, innovation, exporting, and adoption of superior management practices, while a credit expansion has limited impact. Quantitatively, the credit contraction between 2007 and 2009 accounts for about a quarter of observed the decline in TFP.

Financial Constraints, Intangible Assets, and Firm Dynamics

Financial Constraints, Intangible Assets, and Firm Dynamics PDF Author: Sophia Chen
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484393759
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
I study whether firms' reliance on intangible assets is an important determinant of financing constraints. I construct new measures of firm-level physical and intangible assets using accounting information on U.S. public firms. I find that firms with a higher share of intangible assets in total assets start smaller, grow faster, and have higher Tobin’s q. Asset tangibility predicts firm dynamics and Tobin’s q up to 30 years but has diminishing predicative power. I develop a model of endogenous financial constraints in which firm size and value are limited by the enforceability of financial contracts. Asset tangibility matters because physical and intangible assets differ in their residual value when the contract is repudiated. This mechanism is qualitatively important to explain stylized facts of firm dynamics and Tobin’s q.

Producer Dynamics

Producer Dynamics PDF Author: Timothy Dunne
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226172570
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 623

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Book Description
The Census Bureau has recently begun releasing official statistics that measure the movements of firms in and out of business and workers in and out of jobs. The economic analyses in Producer Dynamics exploit this newly available data on establishments, firms, and workers, to address issues in industrial organization, labor, growth, macroeconomics, and international trade. This innovative volume brings together a group of renowned economists to probe topics such as firm dynamics across countries; patterns of employment dynamics; firm dynamics in nonmanufacturing industries such as retail, health services, and agriculture; employer-employee turnover from matched worker/firm data sets; and turnover in international markets. Producer Dynamics will serve as an invaluable reference to economists and policy makers seeking to understand the links between firms and workers, and the sources of economic dynamics, in the age of globalization.