
doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3432990
This paper studies the effect of bank lending shocks on aggregate labor productivity. Exploiting a unique administrative dataset covering the universe of Italian manufacturing firms between 2000 and 2015, we apply the Melitz and Polanec (2015) decomposition at the 4-digit industry level to distinguish the contribution to aggregate productivity growth of: changes in surviving firms’ average productivity, market share reallocation among surviving firms, and firm entry and exit. We estimate the impact of credit shocks on each of these components, using data from the Italian Credit Register to construct industry-specific exogenous credit supply shocks. Only for the 2008-2015 period, we find that a tightening in the supply of credit lowers average productivity but increases the covariance between market share and productivity among incumbents, thus boosting the reallocation of labor. We find no significant effects of credit supply shocks on the contribution made by firm entry and exit. We find that the effects of negative credit shocks on average productivity and reallocation are concentrated in industries with a lower share of tangible capital and collateralized debt.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 0 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
