Financial Frictions, Borrowing Costs, and Firm Size Across Sectors

We document new evidence that financial under-development is associated with higher borrowing rates, lower investment in productivity, a smaller share of large firms, and smaller average firm size, both in manufacturing and services. To account for these patterns, we develop a two-sector economy with heterogeneous entrepreneurs that face financial frictions in the form of borrowing rates that rise with the cost of monitoring risky investments. The model is tractable and can be solved analytically, making clear predictions for the impact of high borrowing costs on investment, the share of large firms, and average firm size across sectors, consistent with the evidence we document. Varying monitoring costs to generate observed cross-country differences in borrowing rates, the model can account for one-third of the log-variance of observed average firm size across sectors, over 20 percent of the variation in investment, and a 30 percent drop in aggregate productivity, all substantial relative to the literature.