One Size Does Not Fit All: TFP in the Aftermath of Financial Crises in Three European Countries

Christian Abele (1) , Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (1) , Lionel Fontagné (1)

1 PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques

We analyse the impact of both the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the European sovereign and banking crisis of 2011-13 on firm-level productivity in France, Italy and Spain. We firstly show that relying on a single break date in 2008 misses both the euro crisis and countries' institutional speci_cities. Secondly, although leverage and financial constraints affect firm-level productivity negatively, high-leverage firms su_er more from financial constraints only in Italy, when they are relatively small or when their debt is of short maturity. These results, which are robust to a series of alternative explanations, call for approaches taking into consideration country-level characteristics of financial institutions and time varying _nancing constraints of the firms, instead of pooling data and adopting a common break date. One size does not fit all when it comes to identifying the impact of financial crises on firm level productivity.

Mots clés: total factor productivity; firm-level data; financial constraints; crises

Domaines: Economies et finances

Christian Abele, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Lionel Fontagné. One Size Does Not Fit All: TFP in the Aftermath of Financial Crises in Three European Countries. 2020. ⟨halshs-02883685v1⟩