The paper examines the causal effect of financial constraints on firm exports. We exploit a firm-level proxy of constraints based on credit ratings and available for a large panel of Italian exporting and non exporting firms. Our estimation strategy allows to cure for self-selection into exports...

Combining detailed data on export transactions and an informative firm level measure of financing constraints, this paper provides new evidence on the extent and dynamics of product and geographical diversification of constrained exporters. Financial constraints associates with: (i) narrower...

Using data on cross border transactions together with an informative measure of financing constraints this paper provides new evidence that limited access to external capital narrows the scale of foreign sales, the exporters? product scope and the number of trade partners. It shows that...

Theoretical and empirical studies of industry dynamics have extensively focused on the process of growth. Theory predicts production efficiency, profitability and financial status as the central channels through which firms can survive, grow and eventually achieve out- standing growth...

The upper tail of the firm size distribution is often assumed to follow a Power Law behavior. Recently, using different estimators and on different data sets, several papers conclude that this distribution follows the Zipf Law, meaning that the fraction of firms whose size is above a given value...

The size distribution and growth rates dynamics of U.S. manufacturing firms have been extensively studied by many authors. In this paper, using the COMPUSTAT database, we extend the analysis to disaggregated data, studying 15 industrial sectors. We find that among the stylized facts presented in...

Analyzing a comprehensive database of limited liability manufacturing firms this paper investigates the relation between a firm's financial situation and its conditional expected growth rate. Specifically, using quantile regressions, we obtain a quantitative characterization of this relation for...

Diverse theories of industry dynamics predict heterogeneity in production efficiency to be the driver of firms' growth, survival and industrial change, either through a direct link between efficiency and growth, or through an indirect effect via profitabilities, as more productive firms can...

This study analyzes the effect of financial constraints (FCs) on firm dynamics. We measure FCs with an official credit rating, which captures availability and cost of external resources. We find that FCs undermine average firm growth, induce anti-correlation in growth patterns and reduce the...

The ability of firms to access external financial resources represents a key factor in- fluencing several dimensions of firms’ dynamics. However, while recent qualitative evidence suggests the existence of heterogeneous and asymmetric reactions of firms to financing constraints (FC) problems,...