IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed010/1004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credit Constraints, Firms' Precautionary Investment, and the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Ander Perez

    (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Abstract

This paper studies the macroeconomic implications of firms' precautionary real investment behavior in response to the anticipation of future financing constraints. Firms increase their demand for liquid and safe but low-return investments in anticipation of future borrowing constraints in order to decrease the probability of having to forego future profitable investment opportunities. I show in a calibrated model that this behavior is at the source of a novel and powerful amplification channel of macroeconomic shocks. Furthermore, it can account for the observed business cycle patterns of the aggregate and firm-level composition of real investment, a set of observations which is at odds with the existing models studying the macroeconomic implications of financial frictions, in which the expectation of future credit constraints does not directly affect firms' current actions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ander Perez, 2010. "Credit Constraints, Firms' Precautionary Investment, and the Business Cycle," 2010 Meeting Papers 1004, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed010:1004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2010/paper_1004.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stulz, René M., 1984. "Optimal Hedging Policies," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 127-140, June.
    2. Francisco Covas & Wouter J. Den Haan, 2012. "The Role of Debt and Equity Finance Over the Business Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(565), pages 1262-1286, December.
    3. Thomas W. Bates & Kathleen M. Kahle & René M. Stulz, 2009. "Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash than They Used To?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 1985-2021, October.
    4. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    5. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Moore, John, 1997. "Credit Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 211-248, April.
    6. Carlstrom, Charles T & Fuerst, Timothy S, 1997. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 893-910, December.
    7. Angeletos, George-Marios & Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel, 2006. "Idiosyncratic production risk, growth and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1095-1115, September.
    8. Philippe Aghion & Stephen Bond & Alexander Klemm & Ioana Marinescu, 2004. "Technology and Financial Structure: Are Innovative Firms Different?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 277-288, 04/05.
    9. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    10. Aghion, Philippe & Banerjee, Abhijit, 2005. "Volatility and Growth," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199248612.
    11. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    12. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas, 2000. "Equity, Bonds, and Bank Debt: Capital Structure and Financial Market Equilibrium under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 324-351, April.
    13. M. Ishaq Nadiri, 1993. "Innovations and Technological Spillovers," NBER Working Papers 4423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Philippe Aghion & Philippe Askenazy & Nicolas Berman & Gilbert Cette & Laurent Eymard, 2012. "Credit Constraints And The Cyclicality Of R&D Investment: Evidence From France," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1001-1024, October.
    15. Froot, Kenneth A & Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1993. "Risk Management: Coordinating Corporate Investment and Financing Policies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1629-1658, December.
    16. Gadi Barlevy, 2004. "On the timing of innovation in stochastic Schumpeterian growth models," Working Paper Series WP-04-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    17. Rampini, Adriano A., 2004. "Entrepreneurial activity, risk, and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 555-573, April.
    18. Huggett, Mark, 1993. "The risk-free rate in heterogeneous-agent incomplete-insurance economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(5-6), pages 953-969.
    19. Acemoglu, Daron & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 1997. "Was Prometheus Unbound by Chance? Risk, Diversification, and Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 709-751, August.
    20. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1777-1804 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Nadiri, M.I., 1993. "Innovations and Technological Spillovers," Working Papers 93-31, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    22. Himmelberg, Charles P & Petersen, Bruce C, 1994. "R&D and Internal Finance: A Panel Study of Small Firms in High-Tech Industries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 38-51, February.
    23. Philippe Aghion & George-Marios Angeletos & Abhijit Banerjee & Kalina Manova, 2005. "Volatility and Growth: Credit Constraints and Productivity-Enhancing Investment," NBER Working Papers 11349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1993. "The cyclical behavior of short-term business lending: Implications for financial propagation mechanisms," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 623-631, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ander Pérez Orive, 2010. "Credit Constraints, Firms' Precautionary Investment, and the Business Cycle," Working Papers 506, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Ander Pérez Orive, 2010. "Credit constraints, firms' precautionary investment and the business cycle," Economics Working Papers 1237, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Nov 2012.
    3. Ye Li, 2018. "Fragile New Economy: The Rise of Intangible Capital and Financial Instability," 2018 Meeting Papers 1189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, October –.
    5. Berentsen, Aleksander & Rojas Breu, Mariana & Shi, Shouyong, 2012. "Liquidity, innovation and growth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(8), pages 721-737.
    6. Angeletos, George-Marios & Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel, 2006. "Idiosyncratic production risk, growth and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 1095-1115, September.
    7. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    8. Ippolito, Filippo & Ozdagli, Ali K. & Perez-Orive, Ander, 2018. "The transmission of monetary policy through bank lending: The floating rate channel," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 49-71.
    9. Marvin Goodfriend & Bennett T. McCallum, 2007. "Banking and interest rates in monetary policy analysis: a quantitative exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    10. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Thomas M. Eisenbach & Yuliy Sannikov, 2012. "Macroeconomics with Financial Frictions: A Survey," Levine's Working Paper Archive 786969000000000384, David K. Levine.
    11. Pérez-Orive, Ander, 2016. "Credit constraints, firms׳ precautionary investment, and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 112-131.
    12. Rodolfo Cermeño Bazán & María Roa García & Claudio González Vega, 2012. "Financial Development and Growth Volatility: Time Series Evidence for Mexico and The United States," Working Papers DTE 544, CIDE, División de Economía.
    13. Aghion, Philippe & Angeletos, George-Marios & Banerjee, Abhijit & Manova, Kalina, 2010. "Volatility and growth: Credit constraints and the composition of investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 246-265, April.
    14. Tinn, K & Vourvachaki, E, 2012. "Can overpricing of technology stocks be good for welfare? Positive spillovers vs. equity market losses," Working Papers 12192, Imperial College, London, Imperial College Business School.
    15. Rodolfo Cermeño & María Roa García & Claudio González-Vega, 2012. "Financial Development and Volatility of Growth: Time Series Evidence for Mexico and USA," DEGIT Conference Papers c017_035, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    16. Rampini, Adriano A., 2004. "Entrepreneurial activity, risk, and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 555-573, April.
    17. Martinsson, Gustav, 2009. "Finance and R&D Investments - is there a debt overhang effect on R&D investments?," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 174, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    18. Martinsson, Gustav, 2008. "Firm Collateral and the Cyclicality of Knowledge Intensity," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 134, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    19. Rodolfo Cermeño & María José Roa, 2013. "Desarrollo financiero, crecimiento y volatidad: Revisión de la literatura reciente," Documentos de Investigación - Research Papers 9, CEMLA.
    20. Hans Gersbach & Jean-Charles Rochet & Martin Scheffel, 2016. "Taking Banks to Solow," International Economic Association Series, in: Joseph E. Stiglitz & Martin Guzman (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Macroeconomics, chapter 13, pages 176-198, Palgrave Macmillan.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed010:1004. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.