How Does Financial Pressure Affect Firms?

How does monetary policy work? While one aspect of the investigation has focused on the behaviour of consumers, another has concentrated on the behaviour of companies faced with the kind of financial pressures associated with tight monetary policy. The general focus in this area is on the impact of financial constraints on investment expenditures including fixed capital and inventories. Our purpose is to shift this focus somewhat and to concentrate on the impact of financial pressure on other aspects of company behaviour. We first discuss briefly the theoretical background and the empirical formulation. Then, using panel data on a large number of UK companies, we derive a number of results.