Capital Account Liberalization and Aggregate Productivity: The Role of Firm Capital Allocation

We study the effects of capital account liberalization on firm capital allocation and aggregate productivity in 10 Eastern European countries. Using a large firm‐level data set, we show that capital account liberalization decreases the dispersion in the return to capital across firms, particularly in sectors more dependent on external finance. We provide evidence that capital account liberalization improves capital allocation by allowing financially constrained firms to demand more capital and produce at a more efficient level. Finally, using a model of misallocation we document that capital account liberalization increases aggregate productivity through more efficient capital allocation by 10% to 16%.     

Do Banks Affect the Level and Composition of Industrial Volatility?

In theory, better access to bank credit can reduce or increase output volatility depending on whether firms are more financially constrained during contractions or expansions. This paper finds that the volatility of industrial output is lower in countries with more bank credit. Most of the reduction in volatility is idiosyncratic, which follows from the ability of banks to pool and diversify shocks. Systematic volatility is reduced less strongly. Volatility dampening is achieved via countercyclical borrowing: At the firm level, short‐term borrowing is less (or more negatively) correlated with sales and inventories in countries with high levels of bank credit.     

Finance and the Business Cycle: International, Inter-Industry Evidence

By considering yearly production growth rates for several manufacturing industries in more than 100 countries during (roughly) the last 40 years, we show that industries that are more dependent on external finance are hit harder during recessions. The observed difference in the behavior of industries is larger when financial frictions are thought to be more prevalent, linking the result directly to the financial mechanism hypothesis. In particular, more dependent industries are more strongly affected in recessions when they are located in countries with poor financial contractibility, and when their assets are softer or less protective of financiers.     

What Moves Investment Growth?

We use accounting identities to decompose unexpected changes in investment growth into surprises to current cash‐flow growth and stock returns, and revisions of expectations about future cash‐flow growth and future discount rates. Using a vector autoregressive model we find that current cash‐flow surprises account for the largest element of the variance decomposition. Investment growth and current cash‐flow surprises are negatively correlated with news about future cash‐flow growth, which can be expected from persistent productivity shocks and decreasing returns to scale. We find little evidence of a discount rate channel for investment since return terms are small and have unintuitive signs.