CAPITAL ALLOCATION AND PRODUCTIVITY IN SOUTH EUROPE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gopinath, Gita; Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem; Karabarbounis, Loukas; Villegas-Sanchez, Carolina
• 署名单位: Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Universitat Ramon Llull; Escuela Superior de Administracion y Direccion de Empresas (ESADE)
• 刊物名称: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-5533
• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjx024
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 1915-1967
• 关键词: AGGREGATE IMPLICATIONS; financial crises; Credit cycles; misallocation; unobservables; frictions; selection; DYNAMICS; MARKET; inputs

摘要

Starting in the early 1990s, countries in southern Europe experienced low productivity growth alongside declining real interest rates. We use data for manufacturing firms in Spain between 1999 and 2012 to document a significant increase in the dispersion of the return to capital across firms, a stable dispersion of the return to labor, and a significant increase in productivity losses from capital misallocation over time. We develop a model with size-dependent financial frictions that is consistent with important aspects of firms' behavior in production and balance sheet data. We illustrate how the decline in the real interest rate, often attributed to the euro convergence process, leads to a significant decline in sectoral total factor productivity as capital inflows are misallocated toward firms that have higher net worth but are not necessarily more productive. We show that similar trends in dispersion and productivity losses are observed in Italy and Portugal but not in Germany, France, and Norway.