IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dnb/dnbwpp/777.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Financial Constraints and Firm Size: Micro-Evidence and Aggregate Implications

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel Ferreira
  • Timo Haber
  • Christian Rorig

Abstract

Using a unique dataset covering the universe of Portuguese firms and their credit situation we show that financially constrained firms are found across the entire firmsize distribution, even in the top 1%. Incorporating a richer, empirically supported, productivity process into a standard heterogeneous firms model generates a joint distribution of size and credit constraints in line with the data. The presence of large constrained firms in the economy, together with their elevated capital share, explains about 66% of the response of output to a financial shock. We conclude by providing microevidence in support of themodel mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Ferreira & Timo Haber & Christian Rorig, 2023. "Financial Constraints and Firm Size: Micro-Evidence and Aggregate Implications," Working Papers 777, DNB.
    • Handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:777
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.dnb.nl/media/1lwf3p3w/working_paper_no-777.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    2. Gilchrist, Simon & Himmelberg, Charles P., 1995. "Evidence on the role of cash flow for investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 541-572, December.
    3. Vincent Sterk & Petr Sedláček & Benjamin Pugsley, 2021. "The Nature of Firm Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(2), pages 547-579, February.
    4. Pablo Ottonello & Thomas Winberry, 2020. "Financial Heterogeneity and the Investment Channel of Monetary Policy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(6), pages 2473-2502, November.
    5. Urban Jermann & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2012. "Macroeconomic Effects of Financial Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 238-271, February.
    6. Thomas Chaney & David Sraer & David Thesmar, 2012. "The Collateral Channel: How Real Estate Shocks Affect Corporate Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2381-2409, October.
    7. Daniel Greenwald, 2019. "Firm Debt Covenants and the Macroeconomy: The Interest Coverage Channel," 2019 Meeting Papers 520, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2013. "Credit Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations in an Economy with Production Heterogeneity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(6), pages 1055-1107.
    9. Francisco Buera & Sudipto Karmakar, 2022. "Real Effects of Financial Distress: The Role of Heterogeneity," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(644), pages 1309-1348.
    10. Sharpe, Steven A, 1994. "Financial Market Imperfections, Firm Leverage, and the Cyclicality of Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 1060-1074, September.
    11. Diana Bonfim & Cláudia Custódio, 2021. "The sensitivity of SME’s investment and employment to the cost of debt financing," Working Papers w202115, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    12. Joan Farre-Mensa & Alexander Ljungqvist, 2016. "Do Measures of Financial Constraints Measure Financial Constraints?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 271-308.
    13. Thomas F. Cooley & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2001. "Financial Markets and Firm Dynamics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1286-1310, December.
    14. Mary Amiti & David E. Weinstein, 2018. "How Much Do Idiosyncratic Bank Shocks Affect Investment? Evidence from Matched Bank-Firm Loan Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 525-587.
    15. Tiago Cavalcanti & Bruno Martins & Cezar Santos & Joseph Kaboski, 2018. "Dispersion in Financing Costs and Development," 2018 Meeting Papers 426, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Gan, Jie, 2007. "Collateral, debt capacity, and corporate investment: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 709-734, September.
    17. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Kevin Caves & Garth Frazer, 2015. "Identification Properties of Recent Production Function Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2411-2451, November.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/75koqefued8i7pihbrl9u84p4u is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Toni M. Whited & Guojun Wu, 2006. "Financial Constraints Risk," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 531-559.
    20. Matthias M M Buehlmaier & Toni M Whited, 2018. "Are Financial Constraints Priced? Evidence from Textual Analysis," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(7), pages 2693-2728.
    21. Young, Eric R., 2010. "Solving the incomplete markets model with aggregate uncertainty using the Krusell-Smith algorithm and non-stochastic simulations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 36-41, January.
    22. Urban Jermann & Vincenzo Quadrini, 2012. "Erratum: Macroeconomic Effects of Financial Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1186-1186, April.
    23. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, 2014. "The Employment Effects of Credit Market Disruptions: Firm-level Evidence from the 2008-9 Financial Crisis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 1-59.
    24. Hopenhayn, Hugo A, 1992. "Entry, Exit, and Firm Dynamics in Long Run Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(5), pages 1127-1150, September.
    25. Charles J. Hadlock & Joshua R. Pierce, 2010. "New Evidence on Measuring Financial Constraints: Moving Beyond the KZ Index," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1909-1940.
    26. Bodnaruk, Andriy & Loughran, Tim & McDonald, Bill, 2015. "Using 10-K Text to Gauge Financial Constraints," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 623-646, August.
    27. Nicolas Crouzet & Neil R. Mehrotra, 2020. "Small and Large Firms over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3549-3601, November.
    28. Chen Lian & Yueran Ma, 2021. "Anatomy of Corporate Borrowing Constraints," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(1), pages 229-291.
    29. Virgiliu Midrigan & Daniel Yi Xu, 2014. "Finance and Misallocation: Evidence from Plant-Level Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 422-458, February.
    30. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 169-215.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ferreira, M. & Haber, T. & Rörig, C., 2021. "Financial Factors, Firm size and Firm Potential," Janeway Institute Working Papers 2110, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5e3g19l1fn9thpq7ldd8kqr3vu is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Sylvain Catherine & Thomas Chaney & Zongbo Huang & David Sraer & David Thesmar, 2022. "Quantifying Reduced‐Form Evidence on Collateral Constraints," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(4), pages 2143-2181, August.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5e3g19l1fn9thpq7ldd8kqr3vu is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Bahaj, Saleem Abubakr & Foulis, Angus & Pinter, Gabor & Surico, Paolo, 2018. "Employment and the collateral channel of monetary policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100934, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Julien Champagne & Émilien Gouin-Bonenfant, 2022. "Monetary Policy, Credit Constraints and SME Employment," Staff Working Papers 22-49, Bank of Canada.
    7. Chen, Kaiji & Song, Zheng, 2013. "Financial frictions on capital allocation: A transmission mechanism of TFP fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(6), pages 683-703.
    8. Mehrotra, Neil & Sergeyev, Dmitriy, 2021. "Financial shocks, firm credit and the Great Recession," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 296-315.
    9. James Cloyne & Clodomiro Ferreira & Maren Froemel & Paolo Surico, 2021. "Monetary Policy, External Finance and Investment," Working Papers 92, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    10. James Cloyne & Clodomiro Ferreira & Maren Froemel & Paolo Surico, 2023. "Monetary Policy, Corporate Finance, and Investment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(6), pages 2586-2634.
    11. Lenzu, Simone & Manaresi, Francesco, 2018. "Do Marginal Products Differ from User Costs? Micro-Level Evidence from Italian Firms," Working Papers 276, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    12. Cao, Shutao & Leung, Danny, 2020. "Credit constraints and productivity of SMEs: Evidence from Canada," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 163-180.
    13. Théo Nicolas, 2022. "Short-term financial constraints and SMEs’ investment decision: evidence from the working capital channel," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1885-1914, April.
    14. Simone Lenzu & Francesco Manaresi, 2019. "Sources and implications of resource misallocation: new evidence from firm-level marginal products and user costs," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 485, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    15. Bianco, Timothy, 2021. "Monetary policy and credit flows," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    16. Li, Xiafei & Luo, Di, 2019. "Financial constraints, stock liquidity, and stock returns," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    17. Cooper Howes, 2019. "Financial Constraints, Sectoral Heterogeneity, and the Cyclicality of Investment," 2019 Meeting Papers 1581, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Zetlin-Jones, Ariel & Shourideh, Ali, 2017. "External financing and the role of financial frictions over the business cycle: Measurement and theory," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1-15.
    19. Bahaj, Saleem & Foulis, Angus & Pinter, Gabor & Surico, Paolo, 2022. "Employment and the residential collateral channel of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 26-44.
    20. Eskandari, Ruhollah & Zamanian, Morteza, 2022. "Cost of carry, financial constraints, and dynamics of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    21. Miguel H. Ferreira, 2023. "Aggregate Implications of Corporate Bond Holdings by Nonfinancial Firms," Working Papers 967, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    22. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firmsize; business cycle; financial accelerator;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:777. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: DNB (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dnbgvnl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.