Svoboda | Graniru | BBC Russia | Golosameriki | Facebook
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/93-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monetary policy, business cycles and the behavior of small manufacturing firms

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Gertler
  • Simon Gilchrist

Abstract

We present evidence on the cyclical behavior of small versus large manufacturing firms, and on the response of the two classes of firms to monetary policy. Our goal is to take a step toward quantifying the role of credit market imperfections in the business cycle and in the monetary transmission mechanism. We find that, following tight money, small firms sales decline at a faster pace than large firm sales for a period of more than two years. Further, bank lending to small firms contracts, while it actually rises for large firms. Monetary policy indicators tied to the performance of banking, such as M2, have relatively greater predictive power for small firms than for large. Finally, small firms are more sensitive than are large to lagged movements in GNP. Considering that small firms overall are a non-trivial component of the economy, we interpret these results as suggestive of the macroeconomic relevance of credit market imperfections.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1993. "Monetary policy, business cycles and the behavior of small manufacturing firms," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 93-4, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:93-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mills, David E & Schumann, Laurence, 1985. "Industry Structure with Fluctuating Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 758-767, September.
    2. Blinder, Alan S & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1983. "Money, Credit Constraints, and Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(2), pages 297-302, May.
    3. Sims, Christopher A, 1980. "Comparison of Interwar and Postwar Business Cycles: Monetarism Reconsidered," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(2), pages 250-257, May.
    4. Calomiris, Charles W & Hubbard, R Glenn, 1990. "Firm Heterogeneity, Internal Finance, and 'Credit Rationing.'," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(399), pages 90-104, March.
    5. Evans, David S & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1989. "An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 808-827, August.
    6. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "The Federal Funds Rate and the Channels of Monetary Transmission," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 901-921, September.
    7. Williamson, Stephen D, 1987. "Financial Intermediation, Business Failures, and Real Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1196-1216, December.
    8. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1989. "Does Monetary Policy Matter? A New Test in the Spirit of Friedman and Schwartz," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 121-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1990. "New Evidence on the Monetary Transmission Mechanism," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 21(1), pages 149-214.
    10. Ben S. Bernanke, 1990. "On the predictive power of interest rates and interest rate spreads," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 51-68.
    11. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    12. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    13. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March.
    14. Romer, Christina D. & Romer, David H., 1989. "Does Monetary Policy Matter? A New Test in the Spirit of Friedman and Schwartz," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5h07k8vf, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    15. Kashyap, Anil K & Stein, Jeremy C & Wilcox, David W, 1993. "Monetary Policy and Credit Conditions: Evidence from the Composition of External Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 78-98, March.
    16. Fuerst, Timothy S., 1992. "Liquidity, loanable funds, and real activity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 3-24, February.
    17. Roger E. A. Farmer, 1985. "Implicit Contracts with Asymmetric Information and Bankruptcy: The Effect of Interest Rates on Layoffs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(3), pages 427-442.
    18. Ramey, Valerie A., 1992. "The source of fluctuations in money : Evidence from trade credit," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 171-193, November.
    19. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    20. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fabio ALESSANDRINI, 2003. "Some Additional Evidence from the Credit Channel on the Response to Monetary Shocks: Looking for Asymmetries," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 03.04, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Riccardo Fiorentini & Roberto Tamborini, 2002. "Monetary Policy, Credit and Aggregate Supply: The Evidence from Italy," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 31(3), pages 451-491, November.
    3. Anil K. Kashyap & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Monetary Policy and Bank Lending," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 221-261, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Riccardo Fiorentini & Roberto Tamborini, 2001. "The Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Italy: The Credit Channel and a Missing Ring," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 60(1), pages 1-42, June.
    5. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    6. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles Evans, 1994. "The Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks: Some Evidence from the Flow of Funds," NBER Working Papers 4699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ramey, Valerie, 1993. "How important is the credit channel in the transmission of monetary policy?," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 1-45, December.
    8. Philip Lowe & Thomas Rohling, 1993. "Agency Costs, Balance Sheets and the Business Cycle," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9311, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    9. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2022. "Financial Intermediation and the Economy," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2022-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    10. Kashyap, Anil K. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1995. "The impact of monetary policy on bank balance sheets," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 151-195, June.
    11. Marco Gallegati, 2005. "Financial constraints and the balance sheet channel: a re-interpretation," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(16), pages 1925-1933.
    12. Spiros Bougheas & Paul Mizen & Cihan Yalcin, 2004. "Access to External Finance : Theory and Evidence on the Impact of Firm-Specific Characteristics," Working Papers 0406, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    13. Aadland, David, 2005. "Detrending time-aggregated data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 287-293, December.
    14. Cleary, Sean & Povel, Paul & Raith, Michael, 2007. "The U-Shaped Investment Curve: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 1-39, March.
    15. Leeper, Eric M., 1997. "Narrative and VAR approaches to monetary policy: Common identification problems," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 641-657, December.
    16. Bougheas, Spiros & Mizen, Paul & Yalcin, Cihan, 2006. "Access to external finance: Theory and evidence on the impact of monetary policy and firm-specific characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 199-227, January.
    17. Fachat, Christian, 2000. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 2/2000, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    18. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148, Elsevier.
    19. Christopher L. House, 2002. "Adverse Selection and the Accelerator," Macroeconomics 0211015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Hansen, Sten, 1999. "Agency Costs, Credit Constraints and Corporate Investment," Working Paper Series 79, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:93-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.