Why Are Returns to Private Business Wealth So Dispersed?

Corina Boar, Denis Gorea and Virgiliu Midrigan

No 29705, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use firm-level data from Orbis to document that average returns to private business wealth are dispersed and persistent, and that firms experience large and fat-tailed changes in output that are not fully accompanied by changes in their capital stock and wage bill, and therefore generate large changes in firm profits. We interpret this evidence using a model of entrepreneurial dynamics in which return heterogeneity arises from both limited span of control, as well as from financial frictions which generate differences in marginal returns to wealth. The model matches the evidence on average returns and predicts that marginal returns are three fourths as dispersed as average returns, mostly reflecting risk as opposed to collateral constraints. Though financial frictions greatly depress individual firms' production choices and cash flows, they generate relatively modest productivity and output losses in the aggregate.

JEL-codes: E2 E44 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-ent, nep-fdg and nep-mac
Note: CF EFG IO ME PR
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