The effect of financing frictions on firm productivity growth is not well understood. Using a model we show that a rise in financial frictions leads to increased sensitivity of productivity growth to the use of external finance. We test this prediction using a large dataset of mostly private...

Using data on a broad set of European firms, we find a strong positive relationship between the use of external financing and future productivity (TFP) growth within firms. This relationship is robust to various measures of financing and productivity, and strengthens as financing costs increase....