Financial markets and the allocation of capital: the role of productivity

Filippo di Mauro (), Fadi Hassan and Gianmarco Ottaviano

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The efficient allocation of credit is a key element for the success of an economy. Traditional measures of allocative efficiency focus on the Q-theory of investment and, in particular, on the elasticity of finance to investment opportunities proxied by firm real value added. This paper introduces a theorybased alternative measure that focuses instead on the elasticity of credit to firm productivity. In doing so, it develops a simple theoretical framework that delivers clear predictions for the elasticity of credit to current and future productivity depending on capital market frictions. When applied to the novel firm-level dataset of the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) set up by the EU System of Central Banks, the proposed measure leads to normative statements about the efficiency of credit allocation across the largest Eurozone economies, changing the conclusions that one would reach based on traditional empirical applications of Q-theory.

Keywords: bank credit; capital allocation; productivity; credit constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D92 G10 G21 G31 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-eff and nep-fdg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/91676/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Financial markets and the allocation of capital: the role of productivity (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:91676

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().