Inventory investment and financial constraints in the Italian manufacturing industry: A panel data GMM approach

Three large unbalanced panels of Italian manufacturing firms observed over the period 1991–2009 are employed to assess, by means of a dynamic GMM approach, whether the existence of financial frictions is suitable to explain deviations of inventories from their long-run path. A negative response of inventory investment to the presence of financial burdens might provide evidence of a significant role played by the financial framework in conditioning the real side of the economy, especially during recession years, when liquidity problems arise. The negative effect is found over the entire analyzed period, with firms' dimensional aspects accounting more than risk characteristics to explain the phenomenon, but the inclusion of recessionary dummies into the model leads to controversial and puzzling results. A significant recessionary effect is found during the Nineties, accounting for inventories being more sensitive to financial frictions during the main recessionary peaks, 1993 and 1996. The result is not confirmed by the most recent estimates, especially the ones referring to the 2008–2009 recessionary shock, whose effects are investigated for the first time by a paper addressing the inventory investment–financial constraints subject. Alternative hypothesis for the proposed results have been tested on data. Firms were found to rely on inventory decumulation to a lesser extent compared to the past, to generate internal financing. More specifically, disinvestments in financial assets were found to represent, as a matter of fact, one of the main drivers adopted to ease liquidity tensions: a negative and strongly significant relationship with inventory investment was detected, after controlling for short-run liquidity constraints at firm level. By contrast, only a weak negative relationship was established with fixed capital during the same recessionary biennium.