We study the impact of bank credit supply on the output and productivity of borrower firms. Exploiting a matched firm-bank database covering all credit relationships of Italian corporations over more than a decade, we measure idiosyncratic supply-side shocks to firm credit availability. Then, we estimate a production model augmented with heterogeneous financial frictions, to show that an expans...

This dissertation consist of three essays. In the first essay, I examine optimal dynamic contracting between risk-averse investors and firm insiders in a dynamic general-equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms. The equilibrium optimal contract features a higher rate of inefficient liquidations in aggregate states with low productivity and a reward-for-luck policy in high productivity states....

This article contends that the various measures of the contribution of technology shocks to business cycles calculated using the real business cycle modeling method are not corroborated. The article focuses on a different and much simpler method for calculating the contribution of technology shocks, which takes account of facts concerning the productivity/labor input correlation and the variabi...

Credit has been found to be a catalyst for economic growth, as it spurs investment, enhances productivity, allows costs to be spread out over time, improves resource allocation, and enables investors to cope better with macroeconomic volatility. Most studies focus on the relationship between financial development and growth at the country level, while few analyze the relationship at the firm le...

We propose a model that generates an economic expansion following good news about future total factor productivity (TFP) or investmentspecific technical change. The model has three key elements: variable capital utilization, adjustment costs to investment, and preferences that exhibit a weak short-run wealth effect on the labor supply. These preferences nest, as special cases, the two classes o...

Do superstars receive dramatically larger incomes because they are dramatically more productive or simply because luck has placed them at the top? Using data on the careers and productivity of Major League Baseball players subject to the Vietnam War draft, we find that birthdates randomly drawn in the draft produce 19% fewer players who eventually make the major leagues. Players born on drafted...

The post-war growth experience of developing countries is characterised by three main features. Firstly, enormous divergence between the best and worst performers. Secondly, low persistence in growth rates across time, and finally a general decline in the average growth rate across all countries. Our evidence suggests that these patterns in the data are consistent with a technological growth mo...

In U.S. data 1981–2012, unsecured firm credit moves procyclically and tends to lead GDP, while secured firm credit is acyclical; similarly, shocks to unsecured firm credit explain a far larger fraction of output fluctuations than shocks to secured credit. In this paper we develop a tractable dynamic general equilibrium model in which unsecured firm credit arises from self-enforcing borrowing co...