Finance and the Business Cycle: International, Inter-industry Evidence

By considering yearly production growth rates for several manufacturing industries in more than one hundred countries during (roughly) the last forty years, we show that industries that are more dependent on external finance are hit harder during recessions. The observed difference in the behavior of industries is larger when financial frictions are thought to be more prevalent, linking the result more directly to the financial mechanism hypothesis. In particular, more dependent industries are more strongly affected in recessions when located in countries with poor financial contractibility, and when their assets are softer or less protective of financiers.