This dissertation comprises three distinct economic stduies. The first deals with the origin of business cycle fluctuations and the other two with the measurement of financial constraints and the identification of the respective treatment effect.

In geographically segmented credit markets, local real estate booms can deteriorate the funding conditions for small manufacturing firms and undermine their growth and competitiveness. Based on exogenous variations in the administrative land supply across 202 Chinese cities, we show that real...