IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecb/ecbrbu/20260144.html

Monetary policy under multiple financing constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Perez-Orive, Ander
  • Timmer, Yannick
  • Van der Ghote, Alejandro

Abstract

The fact that monetary policy tightening has stronger effects than easing is a longstanding puzzle in monetary economics. This article studies monetary transmission in settings where firms face multiple financing constraints – a common and well-documented feature of corporate financing. Our theory shows that the multiplicity of financing constraints notably dampens the transmission of expansionary policy to firm borrowing and investment, while amplifying the transmission of policy tightening. This asymmetry arises because, when policy tightens, the most responsive constraint binds; whereas, when policy eases, the least responsive constraint limits the expansion of borrowing. We find strong empirical support for these predictions. Moreover, embedding the mechanism in a standard New Keynesian framework, we find that the decline in aggregate investment following contractionary monetary shocks is twice as large as the increase following equally sized expansionary shocks. JEL Classification: D22, D25, E22, E44, E52

Suggested Citation

  • Perez-Orive, Ander & Timmer, Yannick & Van der Ghote, Alejandro, 2026. "Monetary policy under multiple financing constraints," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 144.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbrbu:2026:0144:
    Note: 2828013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/research-publications/resbull/2026/html/ecb.rb260623~d5784647c1.en.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/research-publications/resbull/2026/html/ecb.rb260623~d5784647c1.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Silvana Tenreyro & Gregory Thwaites, 2016. "Pushing on a String: US Monetary Policy Is Less Powerful in Recessions," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 43-74, October.
    2. Regis Barnichon & Christian Matthes & Alexander Ziegenbein, 2022. "Are the Effects of Financial Market Disruptions Big or Small?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(3), pages 557-570, May.
    3. Thomas Drechsel, 2023. "Earnings-Based Borrowing Constraints and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 1-34, April.
    4. repec:oup:qjecon:v:136:y:2021:i:1:p:229-291. is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Mario Forni & Luca Sala & Luca Gambetti & Davide Debortoli, 2020. "Asymmetric Effects of Monetary Policy Easing and Tightening," Working Papers 1205, Barcelona School of Economics.
    6. Bobasu, Alina & Repele, Amalia, 2025. "Effects of monetary policy on labour income: the role of the employer," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 129.
    7. Jeremy C. Stein, 2014. "Incorporating Financial Stability Considerations into a Monetary Policy Framework : a speech at the International Research Forum on Monetary Policy, Washington, D.C., March 21, 2014," Speech 796, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Joshua D. Angrist & Òscar Jordà & Guido M. Kuersteiner, 2018. "Semiparametric Estimates of Monetary Policy Effects: String Theory Revisited," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 371-387, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ascari, Guido & Bijnens, Gert & Bobasu, Alina & Colciago, Andrea & Dhyne, Emmanuel & Elfsbacka-Schmöller, Michaela & Grimaud, Alex & Valderrama, Maria Teresa & Zlobins, Andrejs & Audzei, Volha, 2026. "Monetary policy transmission and structural changes," Occasional Paper Series 393, European Central Bank.

    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. Ander Pérez-Orive & Yannick Timmer & Alejandro Van der Ghote, 2026. "Monetary Policy under Multiple Financing Constraints," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2026-021, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Timmer, Yannick & Van der Ghote, Alejandro & Perez-Orive, Ander, 2026. "Monetary policy under multiple financing constraints," Working Paper Series 3217, European Central Bank.
    3. Leonardo Nogueira Ferreira, 2023. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Financial Conditions, and the String Theory Revisited," Working Papers Series 573, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    4. Miescu, Mirela & Mumtaz, Haroon & Theodoridis, Konstantinos, 2024. "Non-linear Dynamics of Oil Supply News Shocks," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2024/18, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    5. Damiano Di Francesco & Omar Pietro Carnevale, 2025. "Are Hysteresis Effects Nonlinear?," LEM Papers Series 2025/32, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    6. Mr. Pragyan Deb & Julia Estefania-Flores & Melih Firat & Davide Furceri & Siddharth Kothari, 2023. "Monetary Policy Transmission Heterogeneity: Cross-Country Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2023/204, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Blot, Christophe & Hubert, Paul & Labondance, Fabien, 2024. "The asymmetric effects of monetary policy on stock price bubbles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    8. James Cloyne & Òscar Jordà & Alan M. Taylor, 2020. "Decomposing the Fiscal Multiplier," Working Paper Series 2020-12, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    9. Johannes F. Wieland & Mu‐Jeung Yang, 2020. "Financial Dampening," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(1), pages 79-113, February.
    10. Fergus Cumming & Paul Hubert, 2019. "The Role of Households' Borrowing Constraints in the Transmission of Monetary Policy This paper investigates how the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy depends on the distribution of household debt. Using an original loan-level datas," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2019-20, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    11. Roben Kloosterman & Dennis Bonam & Koen van der Veer, 2022. "The effects of monetary policy across fiscal regimes," Working Papers 755, DNB.
    12. Fergus Cumming & Paul Hubert, 2019. "The role of households' borrowing constraints in the transmission of monetary policy," Working Papers hal-03403257, HAL.
    13. Xiwen Bai & Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Yiliang Li & Francesco Zanetti, 2026. "State Dependence of Monetary Policy During Global Supply Chain Disruptions," CAMA Working Papers 2026-37, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    14. Johns, Christopher & Mehrotra, Aaron & Zampolli, Fabrizio, 2026. "Sovereign risk and monetary policy transmission: Evidence from the euro area," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    15. Régis Barnichon & Christian Matthes, 2014. "Gaussian Mixture Approximations of Impulse Responses and the Nonlinear Effects of Monetary Shocks," Working Paper 16-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    16. Blanco Barroso, Joao & Barbone Gonzalez, Rodrigo & Peydró, José-Luis & Nazar van Doornik, Bernardus, 2019. "Countercyclical Liquidity Policy and Credit Cycles: Evidence from Macroprudential and Monetary Policy in Brazil," EconStor Preprints 216792, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. John Aguirre & Alan Ledesma & Fernando Perez & Youel Rojas, 2025. "Economic Activity, Inflation, and Monetary Policy after Extreme Weather Events: ENSO and its Economic Impact on the Peruvian Economy," Working Papers 2025-008, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    18. Gonçalves, Sílvia & Herrera, Ana María & Kilian, Lutz & Pesavento, Elena, 2024. "State-dependent local projections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 244(2).
    19. Velasco, Sofia, 2024. "Asymmetries in the transmission of monetary policy shocks over the business cycle: a Bayesian quantile factor augmented VAR," Working Paper Series 2983, European Central Bank.
    20. Max Breitenlechner & Johann Scharler, 2020. "Private Sector Debt, Financial Constraints, and the Effects of Monetary Policy: Evidence from the US," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(4), pages 889-915, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D25 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice: Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    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:ecb:ecbrbu:2026:0144:. 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.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.