This paper investigates how financial development affects aggregate productivity growth. Based on a sample of developed and emerging economies, we first show that the level of financial development is good only up to a point, after which it becomes a drag on growth. Second, focusing on advanced...

This paper studies the choice between building liquidity buffers and raising funding ex post, to deal with liquidity shocks. We uncover the possibility of an inefficient liquidity squeeze equilibrium. Agents typically choose to build smaller liquidity buffers when they expect cheap funding....

This paper investigates the effect of cyclical macroeconomic policy and financial sector characteristics on growth. Using cross-country, cross-industry OECD data, it yields two main findings. First, countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies foster growth disproportionately in more...

This paper analyzes the impact of cyclical fiscal policy on industry growth. Using Rajan and Zingales' (1998) difference-in-difference methodology on a panel data sample of manufacturing industries across 15 OECD countries over the period 1980-2005, we show that industries with relatively...

In this paper we examine the negative relationship between the rate of growth of the financial sector and the rate of growth of total factor productivity. We begin by showing that by disproportionately benefiting high collateral/low productivity projects, an exogenous increase in finance reduces...

In this paper, we use cross-industry, cross-country panel data to test whether industry growth is positively affected by the interaction between the reaction of real short-term interest rates to the business cycle and industry-level measures of financial constraints. Financial constraints are...