The Long Run Earnings Effects of a Credit Market Disruption

This paper studies the long-term consequences on firms and workers of the credit crunch triggered by the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Relying on a unique matched bank-employer-employee administrative dataset, we construct a firm-specific credit supply shock and examine firms’ and workers’ outcomes for 11 years after the crisis. We find that highly-exposed firms shrink permanently and invest less; these effects are larger for high capital-intensive firms. The impact on workers’ earnings is also long-lasting, especially for high skilled workers, who are more complementary to capital. Displaced workers reallocate mostly to low capital-intensive firms, experiencing persistent wage losses.