We use a French firm-level panel data set over the period 1993-2004 to analyze the relationship between credit constraints and firms' R&D behavior over the business cycle. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) the share of R&D investment over total investment is countercyclical...

The interest rate at which US firms borrow funds has two features: (i) it moves in a countercyclical fashion and (ii) it is an inverted leading indicator of real economic activity: low interest rates today forecast future booms in GDP, consumption, investment, and employment. We show that a...

We study the macroeconomic effects of rational asset bubbles in an overlapping-generations economy where asset trading requires specialized intermediaries and where agents freely choose between working in the production or in the financial sector. Frictions in the market for deposits create...

This paper studies how financial development affects the relation between average growth and growth volatility through liquidity crises. We .first establish in a micro model that imperfect enforceability creates a short term bias in contracts financing long term investments. This can generate...

This paper addresses the macroeconomic impact of international financial integration. I first provide empirical evidence that foreign banking penetration can be associated with a contraction of banking credit, especially in countries with poor credit markets. Second I present a model in which...

Recent empirical work has shown that current account deficits have been associated with lower growth in developing countries while they have been associated with higher growth in developed countries. This paper shows that this can be rationalized in an environment where firms face (i)...

The quantitative and dynamic consequence of a social VAT reform, i.e. a fiscal reform consisting in substituting VAT for social contributions, is assessed using two general equilibrium models. The first one is a Walrasian model with no other frictions than distortionary taxation of labor and...

Over the last decade, France and Spain have experienced property price and residential investment increases which were among the strongest and the lengthiest in the euro area. Although the quality of the underlying data limits the precision of the estimates, the present paper aims at analysing...

ICT components, such as microprocessors, may be embodied in other capital goods not recorded as ICT in National Accounts. We name ‘indirect ICT investment' the value of embodied ICT components in non-ICT investment. The paper provides estimates of ‘indirect ICT investment' based on detailed...

This analysis proposes new measures of rent creation or (notional) mark-up and workers' share of rents on cross-country-industry panel data. While the usual measures of mark-up rate implicitly assume perfect labor markets, our approach relaxes this assumption, and takes into account that part of...