We examine how credit constraints affect the cyclical behavior of productivity-enhancing investment and thereby volatility and growth. We first develop a simple growth model where firms engage in two types of investment: a short-term one and a long-term productivity-enhancing one. Because it...

This paper examines the family income -- college enrollment relationship and the evidence on credit constraints in post-secondary schooling. We distinguish short-run liquidity constraints from the long-term factors that promote cognitive and noncognitive ability. Long-run factors crystallized in...

While investment in most sectors declines in response to a contractionary monetary policy shock, investment in the manufacturing sector increases. Using manually digitized aggregate income and balance sheet data for the universe of US manufacturing firms, I show this increase is driven by the...

We argue that political connections help financially constrained firms access external financing and consequently reduce their incentives to use tax planning as a source of internal financing. Consistent with this argument, we find that after a plausibly exogenous increase in political...

How do firms’ credit constraint affect their export mode choices between direct exporting and indirect exporting through intermediaries? This study explores this issue in a heterogeneous firm model where firms differ not only in productivity but also in credit levels. Our model predicts that...