Andrea Generale
- 1 December 2001
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 112Details
- Abstract
- We present a comparable set of results on the monetary transmission channels on firm investment for the four largest countries of the euro area (Germany, France, Italy and Spain). With particularly rich micro datasets for each country containing over 215,000 observations from 1985 to 1999, we explore what can be learned on the interest channel and broad credit channel. For each of those countries we estimate neo-classical investment relationships, explaining investment by its user cost, sales and cash flow. We find investment to be sensitive to user cost changes in all those four countries. This implies an operative interest channel in these euro area countries. We also find investment in all those countries to be quite sensitive to cash flow movements. However we find that only in Italy smaller firms react more to cash flow movements, implying that a broad credit channel might not be as pervasive in all countries
- JEL Code
- E22 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Capital, Investment, Capacity
E50 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→General - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network
- 1 December 2001
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 110Details
- Abstract
- This paper studies the effects of monetary policy on the investment behaviour of various categories of Italian firms, using a panel from the Company Accounts Data Service (Centrale dei Bilanci). The exercise aims to shed light on the quantitative importance of a channel of transmission operating through balance sheets. Financial variables matter (when defined as either cash flow or the stock of liquidity); small firms and firms which have a larger share of assets that cannot be used as collateral are more affected by monetary policy. In quantitative terms, the difference in the response of investment by different types of firms turns out not to be negligible; however, the implications of this finding for transmission asymmetries across euro-area countries should not be overemphasized. Our main policy conclusion is that monitoring the financial conditions of different types of firms is important in order to assess the overall monetary stance
- JEL Code
- E22 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Capital, Investment, Capacity
E50 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→General - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network