IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_838.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the German Monetary Transmission Mechanism: Interest Rate and Credit Channels for Investment Spending

Author

Listed:
  • Robert S. Chirinko
  • Ulf von Kalckreuth

Abstract

The transmission channels through which monetary policy affects business investment remain opaque. This paper examines the importance of the interest rate and credit channels on business fixed investment in Germany. We have at our disposal three uniquely rich datasets -- a panel of financial statement data for 6,408 firms (44,345 datapoints) supplemented with user costs of capital and confidential measures of creditworthiness. We uncover a statistically significant interest rate channel. Its economic significance can be sizeable, but depends on auxiliary assumptions. Sorting firms with our direct measure of creditworthiness, we find that credit constraints are important for a subset of firms. Sortings by firm size or dividend payout ratios shed some light on continuing debates in the literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert S. Chirinko & Ulf von Kalckreuth, 2003. "On the German Monetary Transmission Mechanism: Interest Rate and Credit Channels for Investment Spending," CESifo Working Paper Series 838, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_838
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo_wp838.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Timothy Erickson & Toni M. Whited, 2000. "Measurement Error and the Relationship between Investment and q," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 1027-1057, October.
    3. Christiano, Lawrence J & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles, 1996. "The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks: Evidence from the Flow of Funds," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 16-34, February.
    4. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    5. Elsas, Ralf & Krahnen, Jan Pieter, 1998. "Is relationship lending special? Evidence from credit-file data in Germany," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(10-11), pages 1283-1316, October.
    6. Auerbach, Alan J, 1983. "Taxation, Corporate Financial Policy and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 905-940, September.
    7. Alan J. Auerbach (ed.), 1997. "Fiscal Policy: Lessons from Economic Research," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262011603, December.
    8. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.
    9. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1996. "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-15, February.
    10. Fabio Schiantarelli, 1995. "Financial constraints and investment: a critical review of methodological issues and international evidence," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 39, pages 177-226.
    11. Abel, Andrew B & Eberly, Janice C, 1994. "A Unified Model of Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1369-1384, December.
    12. Stephen D. Williamson, 1987. "Costly Monitoring, Loan Contracts, and Equilibrium Credit Rationing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(1), pages 135-145.
    13. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148, Elsevier.
    14. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    15. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    16. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1998. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 193-225, March.
    17. Barnett, Steven A. & Sakellaris, Plutarchos, 1998. "Nonlinear response of firm investment to Q:: Testing a model of convex and non-convex adjustment costs1," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 261-288, July.
    18. Frederic S. Mishkin, 1995. "Symposium on the Monetary Transmission Mechanism," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 3-10, Fall.
    19. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    20. Jorgenson, Dale W & Stephenson, James A, 1969. "Issues in the Development of the Neoclassical Theory of Investment Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 346-353, August.
    21. Ben Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1990. "Financial Fragility and Economic Performance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 87-114.
    22. Chirinko, Robert S. & Fazzari, Steven M. & Meyer, Andrew P., 1999. "How responsive is business capital formation to its user cost?: An exploration with micro data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 53-80, October.
    23. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1989. "Does Monetary Policy Matter? A New Test in the Spirit of Friedman and Schwartz," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 121-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Blanchard, Olivier Jean, 1990. "Why does money affect output? A survey," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 779-835, Elsevier.
    25. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 2000. "Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Are Not Valid Measures of Financing Constraints," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 707-712.
    26. Taylor, John B, 1989. "Monetary Policy and the Stability of Macroeconomic Relationships," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(S), pages 161-178, Supplemen.
    27. Eisner, Robert & Nadiri, M Ishaq, 1970. "Neoclassical Theory of Investment Behavior: A Comment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 52(2), pages 216-222, May.
    28. J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    29. Oliner, Stephen D & Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1992. "Sources of the Financing Hierarchy for Business Investment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 643-654, November.
    30. Rudebusch, Glenn D, 2005. "Assessing the Lucas Critique in Monetary Policy Models," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 245-272, April.
    31. Coen, Robert M, 1969. "Tax Policy and Investment Behavior: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 370-379, June.
    32. Ulf von Kalckreuth, 2003. "Exploring the role of uncertainty for corporate investment decisions in Germany," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 139(II), pages 173-206, June.
    33. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    34. Chirinko, Robert S, 1988. "Business Tax Policy, the Lucas Critique, and Lessons from the 1980's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 206-210, May.
    35. Hall, Robert E & Jorgenson, Dale W, 1969. "Tax Policy and Investment Behavior: Reply and Further Results," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 388-401, June.
    36. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 169-215.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. von Kalckreuth, Ulf & Murphy, Emma, 2005. "Financial constraints and capacity adjustment in the United Kingdom: Evidence from a large panel of survey data," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2005,01, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    2. Daniela Federici & Valentino Parisi & Caroline Elliott, 2015. "Do corporate taxes reduce investments? Evidence from Italian firm-level panel data," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1012435-101, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. von Kalckreuth, Ulf & Chirinko, Robert S. & Breitung, Jörg, 2003. "A Vectorautoregressive Investment Model (VIM) and Monetary Policy Transmission: Panel Evidence from German Firms," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2003,06, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    2. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, October –.
    3. Caggese, Andrea, 2007. "Testing financing constraints on firm investment using variable capital," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 683-723, December.
    4. Robert S. Chirinko & Steven M. Fazzari & Andrew P. Meyer, 2002. "That Elusive Elasticity: A Long-Panel Approach To Estimating The Price Sensitivity Of Business Capital," 10th International Conference on Panel Data, Berlin, July 5-6, 2002 B3-1, International Conferences on Panel Data.
    5. von Kalckreuth, Ulf & Chirinko, Robert S., 2002. "Further Evidence On The Relationship Between Firm Investment And Financial Status," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2002,28, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Jacques Mairesse & Bronwyn H. Hall & Benoît Mulkay, 1999. "Firm-Level Investment in France and the United States: An Exploration of What We Have Learned in Twenty Years," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 55-56, pages 27-67.
    7. Robert S. Chirinko & Steven M. Fazzari & Andrew P. Meyer, 2004. "That Elusive Elasticity: A Long-Panel Approach to Estimating the Capital-Labor Substitution Elasticity," CESifo Working Paper Series 1240, CESifo.
    8. Laeven, Luc, 2000. "Does financial liberalization relax financing constraints on firms ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2467, The World Bank.
    9. Hyun-Euy Kim, 2007. "The Interest Rate Channel of Monetary Transmission under Low Inflation in Korea (in Korean)," Economic Analysis (Quarterly), Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea, vol. 13(1), pages 1-56, March.
    10. Gül, Selçuk & Taştan, Hüseyin, 2020. "The impact of monetary policy stance, financial conditions, and the GFC on investment-cash flow sensitivity," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 692-707.
    11. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2003. "Structural modelling of financial constraints on investment: where do we stand?," Chapters, in: Paul Butzen & Catherine Fuss (ed.), Firms’ Investment and Finance Decisions, chapter 2, pages 40-58, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Alessandra Guariglia & John Tsoukalas & Serafeim Tsoukas, 2010. "Investment, irreversibility, and financing constraints in transition economies," Discussion Papers 10/03, University of Nottingham, School of Economics.
    13. Eugenio Gaiotti & Andrea Generale, 2002. "Does Monetary Policy Have Asymmetric Effects? A Look at the Investment Decisions of Italian Firms," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 61(1), pages 29-59, June.
    14. Jason G. Cummins & Kevin A. Hassett & Stephen D. Oliner, 2006. "Investment Behavior, Observable Expectations, and Internal Funds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 796-810, June.
    15. Vijayakumaran, Ratnam, 2021. "Impact of managerial ownership on investment and liquidity constraints: Evidence from Chinese listed companies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    16. Joanna Tyrowicz, 2007. "Blame No One ?Investment Decisions of the Polish Stock-Listed Companies," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 50(4), pages 391-410.
    17. Chirinko, Robert S. & Schaller, Huntley, 2009. "The irreversibility premium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 390-408, April.
    18. Milos Markovic & Michael A. Stemmer, 2017. "Firm Growth Dynamics and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Serbian Firms," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17012, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    19. Guariglia, Alessandra, 2008. "Internal financial constraints, external financial constraints, and investment choice: Evidence from a panel of UK firms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1795-1809, September.
    20. Tuomas A. Peltonen & Ricardo M. Sousa & Isabel S. Vansteenkiste, 2011. "Fundamentals, Financial Factors, and the Dynamics of Investment in Emerging Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(0), pages 88-105, May.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_838. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.