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Working Paper
An Estimated Structural Model of Entrepreneurial Behavior
Using a rich panel of owner-operated New York dairy farms, we provide new evidence on entrepreneurial behavior. We formulate a dynamic model of farms facing uninsured risks and financial constraints. Farmers derive nonpecuniary benefits from operating their businesses. We estimate the model via simulated minimum distance, matching both production and financial data. We find that financial factors and nonpecuniary benefits are of first-order importance. Collateral constraints and liquidity restrictions inhibit borrowing and the accumulation of capital. The nonpecuniary benefits to farming are ...
Working Paper
High-Yield Debt Covenants and Their Real Effects
High-yield debt, including leveraged loans, features incurrence financial covenants or "cov-lite" provisions. These covenants differ from traditional loans' maintenance covenants, as they preserve equity control rights but impose specific restrictions on the borrower after crossing the covenant threshold. Contrary to the prevailing belief that incurrence covenants offer limited protection for creditors, our research reveals a significant and sudden decline in investment upon triggering these covenants. This evidence highlights a novel propagation mechanism for economic shocks, wherein ...
Working Paper
Are Euro-Area Corporate Bond Markets Irrelevant? The Effect of Bond Market Access on Investment
We compare how bond market access affects firms? investment decisions in the United States and the euro area. Having a bond rating enables US corporations to invest more and undertake more acquisitions. In contrast, in the euro area, bond ratings have no effect on investment decisions. Similarly, firms with bond ratings have higher leverage in the United States, but not in the euro area. This difference may be due to euro-area firms getting sufficient financing from banks. Consistent with this explanation, euro-area bond ratings became more relevant for investment after the banking crisis of ...
Working Paper
Desperate House Sellers: Distress Among Developers
Using granular data on home builder housing developments from the 2006-09 housing crisis, I show that builders spread house price shocks across geographically distinct projects via their internal capital markets. Builders who experience losses in one area subsequently sell homes in unaffected areas at a discount to raise cash quickly. Financially constrained firms are more likely to cut prices of homes in healthy areas in response to losses in unhealthy ones. Firms also smooth shocks across projects only during the crisis and not during the boom. These results together suggest firm internal ...
Report
Interest rates and the market for new light vehicles
We study the impact of interest rates changes on both the demand for and supply of new light vehicles in an environment where consumers and manufacturers face their own interest rates. An increase in the consumers? interest rate raises their cost of financing and thus lowers the demand for new vehicles. An increase in the manufacturers? interest rate raises their cost of holding inventories. Both channels have equilibrium effects that are amplified and propagated over time through inventories, which serve as a way to both smooth production and facilitate greater sales at a given price. ...
Working Paper
Legal Institutions, Credit Markets, and Economic Activity
This paper provides novel evidence on the causal connections between legal institutions, credit markets, and real economic activity. Our analysis exploits an unexplored within-country setting?Native American reservations?together with quasi-experimental variation in legal contract enforcement wherein the US Congress externally assigned state courts to adjudicate contracts on a subset of reservations. According to area-specific data on small business credit, reservations assigned to state courts, which enforce contracts more predictably than tribal courts, have stronger credit markets. ...
Working Paper
The Fed Information Effect and Firm-Level Investment: Evidence and Theory
We present evidence that the Fed's private information about economic conditions revealed through Federal Open Market Committee announcements affect firm investment. We use firm-level investment data and analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals to document three facts. First, the investment rate sensitivity to Fed information is greater for more cyclical firms. Second, revisions in analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals are greater for more cyclical firms. Third, the investment response is consistent with changes in firm profitability following Fed announcements. We propose a HANK model to ...
Working Paper
The Fed Information Effect and Firm-Level Investment: Evidence and Theory
We present evidence that the Fed's private information about economic conditions revealed through Federal Open Market Committee announcements affect firm investment. We use firm-level investment data and analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals to document three facts. First, the investment rate sensitivity to Fed information is greater for more cyclical firms. Second, revisions in analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals are greater for more cyclical firms. Third, the investment response is consistent with changes in firm profitability following Fed announcements. We propose a HANK model to ...
Working Paper
The Fed Information Effect and Firm-Level Investment: Evidence and Theory
We present evidence that the Fed's private information about economic conditions revealed through Federal Open Market Committee announcements affect firm investment. We use firm-level investment data and analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals to document three facts. First, the investment rate sensitivity to Fed information is greater for more cyclical firms. Second, revisions in analyst forecasts of firm fundamentals are greater for more cyclical firms. Third, the investment response is consistent with changes in firm profitability following Fed announcements. We propose a HANK model to ...
Working Paper
The Long and Short of It : Do Public and Private Firms Invest Differently?
Using data from U.S. corporate tax returns, which provide a sample representative of the universe of U.S. corporations, we investigate the differential investment propensities of public and private firms. Re-weighting the data to generate observationally comparable sets of public and private firms, we find robust evidence that public firms invest more overall, particularly in R&D. Exploiting within-firm variation in public status, we find that firms dedicate more of their investment to R&D following IPO, and reduce these investments upon going private. Our findings suggest that public stock ...