Andrea Caggese

Financing Constraints and Fixed-Term Employment Contracts

This paper studies the interactions between financing constraints and the employment decisions of firms when both fixed-term and permanent employment contracts are available. We first develop a dynamic model that shows the effects of financing constraints and firing costs on employment decisions. Once calibrated, the model shows that financially constrained firms tend to use more intensely fixed term workers, and to make them absorb a larger fraction of the total employment volatility than financially unconstrained firms do. We test and confirm the predictions of the model on a unique panel data of Italian manufacturing firms with detailed information about the type of workers employed by the firms and about firm financing constraints.

Entrepreneurial risk, investment, and innovation ☆

I estimate the effect of uncertainty on risky innovation using a panel of 11,417 manufacturing firms. I find that an increase in uncertainty has a large negative effect on the risky innovation of entrepreneurial firms, while it does not have any significant impact on other firms. This negative effect is stronger for the less diversified entrepreneurial firms in the sample. The estimation results are consistent with the innovation dynamics generated in a model in which entrepreneurs are risk averse and cannot diversify the risk of their business.

Financing constraints, irreversibility and investment dynamics

We develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints. The financing constraint implies that firms cannot borrow unless the debt is secured by collateral; the irreversibility constraint that they can only sell their fixed capital by selling their business. We use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment, variable capital investment, and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Our model yields three main results. First, the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint. Second, the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint. Finally, the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of US manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical, and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle.

Entrepreneurial risk, investment and innovation

In this paper I develop a general equilibrium model with risk averse entrepreneurial firms and with public firms. The model predicts that an increase in uncertainty reduces the propensity of entrepreneurial firms to innovate, while it does not affect the propensity of public firms to innovate. Furthermore, it predicts that the negative effect of uncertainty on innovation is stronger for the less diversified entrepreneurial firms, and is stronger in the absence of financing frictions in the economy. In the second part of the paper I test these predictions on a dataset of small and medium Italian manufacturing firms.

Financing constraints, irreversibility, and investment dynamics

Abstract We develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints. We use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment, variable capital investment, and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Our model yields three main results. First, the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint. Second, the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint. Finally, the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of US manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical, and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle.

Effects of index option introduction on stock index volatility: a procedure for empirical testing based on SSC-GARCH models

Informed migration, uninformed migration and improved information are the three main potential effects of derivative introduction that, alone or combined, may generate significant changes on volumes, bid-ask and volatility on the underlying asset. Some combinations of these three effects are highly likely to generate observational equivalence making it quite difficult to identify their relative impact in the empirical evidence. This paper aims to provide a marginal contribution to the identification of the prevalent effect by devising an implemented (SSC-GARCH) measure of volatility which evaluates changes in excess reaction to shocks before and after index option introduction in six different countries. The paper finds that the introduction of stock index options: (i) significantly reduces the impact of negative (and, to a lesser extent, positive) shocks on conditional volatility in five out of six countries, (ii) has no significant impact on relative unconditional volatility of stocks belonging to the optioned index in four out of six countries. These results seem compatible with a joint realization of the uninformed migration and the improved information effects.

Capital Misallocation and Secular Stagnation

The widespread emergence of intangible technologies in recent decades may have significantly hurt output growth--even when these technologies replaced considerably less productive tangible technologies--because of structurally low interest rates caused by demographic forces. This insight is obtained in a model in which intangible capital cannot attract external finance, firms are credit constrained, and there is substantial dispersion in productivity. In a tangibles-intense economy with highly leveraged firms, low rates enable more borrowing and faster debt repayment, reduce misallocation, and increase aggregate output. An increase in the share of intangible capital in production reduces the borrowing capacity and increases the cash holdings of the corporate sector, which switches from being a net borrower to a net saver. In this intangibles-intense economy, the ability of firms to purchase intangible capital using retained earnings is impaired by low interest rates, because low rates increase the price of capital and slow down the accumulation of corporate savings.