IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v132y2017i4p1915-1967..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capital Allocation and Productivity in South Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Gita Gopinath
  • Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan
  • Loukas Karabarbounis
  • Carolina Villegas-Sanchez

Abstract

Starting in the early 1990s, countries in southern Europe experienced low productivity growth alongside declining real interest rates. We use data for manufacturing firms in Spain between 1999 and 2012 to document a significant increase in the dispersion of the return to capital across firms, a stable dispersion of the return to labor, and a significant increase in productivity losses from capital misallocation over time. We develop a model with size-dependent financial frictions that is consistent with important aspects of firms’ behavior in production and balance sheet data. We illustrate how the decline in the real interest rate, often attributed to the euro convergence process, leads to a significant decline in sectoral total factor productivity as capital inflows are misallocated toward firms that have higher net worth but are not necessarily more productive. We show that similar trends in dispersion and productivity losses are observed in Italy and Portugal but not in Germany, France, and Norway.

Suggested Citation

  • Gita Gopinath & Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan & Loukas Karabarbounis & Carolina Villegas-Sanchez, 2017. "Capital Allocation and Productivity in South Europe," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 132(4), pages 1915-1967.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:132:y:2017:i:4:p:1915-1967.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjx024
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cette, Gilbert & Fernald, John & Mojon, Benoît, 2016. "The pre-Great Recession slowdown in productivity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 3-20.
    2. Diego Restuccia & Richard Rogerson, 2008. "Policy Distortions and Aggregate Productivity with Heterogeneous Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 707-720, October.
    3. Manuel García-Santana & Enrique Moral-Benito & Josep Pijoan-Mas & Roberto Ramos, 2016. "Growing like Spain: 1995-2007," Working Papers 888, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
    4. Ezra Oberfield, 2013. "Productivity and Misallocation During a Crisis: Evidence from the Chilean Crisis of 1982," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 100-119, January.
    5. Ricardo Reis, 2013. "The Portugese Slump and Crash and the Euro Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 44(1 (Spring), pages 143-210.
    6. Ricardo Lagos, 2006. "A Model of TFP," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 983-1007.
    7. Simon Gilchrist & Jae W. Sim & Egon Zakrajsek, 2013. "Misallocation and Financial Market Frictions: Some Direct Evidence from the Dispersion in Borrowing Costs," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 159-176, January.
    8. Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem & Sorensen, Bent E. & Villegas-Sanchez, Carolina & Volosovych, Vadym & Yesiltas, Sevcan, 2015. "How to construct nationally representative firm level data from the ORBIS global database," CEPR Discussion Papers 10829, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Benjamin Moll, 2014. "Productivity Losses from Financial Frictions: Can Self-Financing Undo Capital Misallocation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3186-3221, October.
    10. Aoki, Kosuke & Benigno, Gianluca & Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro, 2010. "Adjusting to Capital Account Liberalization," CEPR Discussion Papers 8087, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro, 2014. "The Financial Resource Curse," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(1), pages 58-86, January.
    12. Francisco J. Buera & Benjamin Moll, 2015. "Aggregate Implications of a Credit Crunch: The Importance of Heterogeneity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 1-42, July.
    13. Peters, Michael, 2013. "Heterogeneous mark-ups, growth and endogenous misallocation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 54254, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. James Levinsohn & Amil Petrin, 2003. "Estimating Production Functions Using Inputs to Control for Unobservables," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(2), pages 317-341.
    15. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2009. "On estimating firm-level production functions using proxy variables to control for unobservables," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 112-114, September.
    16. Ezra Oberfield, 2011. "Productivity and Misallocation During a Crisis," 2011 Meeting Papers 1328, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Dias, Daniel A. & Robalo Marques, Carlos & Richmond, Christine, 2016. "Misallocation and productivity in the lead up to the Eurozone crisis," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 46-70.
    18. Asim Ijaz Khwaja & Atif Mian, 2005. "Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(4), pages 1371-1411.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    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:oup:qjecon:v:132:y:2017:i:4:p:1915-1967.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Oxford University Press) or (Christopher F. Baum). General contact details of provider: .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.