Essays on competition, financial structure and productivity
In this thesis I analyze 3 current empirical questions of interest in macroeconomics. The first concerns the effect of competition on cash holdings. The large increase in cash held by US firms has increased interest in competition as a possible driver, with contradictory results in the literature. I...
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| Formato: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2018 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/565612 |
| Acesso em linha: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/565612 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Macroeconomics Macroeconomia 33 |
| Resumo: | In this thesis I analyze 3 current empirical questions of interest in macroeconomics. The first concerns the effect of competition on cash holdings. The large increase in cash held by US firms has increased interest in competition as a possible driver, with contradictory results in the literature. I show that low profitability firms increase cash as a response to competition, whereas high profitability firms do the reverse. Afterwards, I focus on the effects of financial structure on productivity. An interesting empirical pattern is uncovered: a firm’s own debt does not harm its own productivity, but aggregate debt does. The negative relationship is shown to work through a real estate valuation channel. Finally, I uncover short-lived pro-cyclical spikes of adjusted aggregate productivity precisely timed at the beginning and end of recessions. I show that they are likely to be associated with demand-side movements, rather than technology shocks. |
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