Firing the wrong workers: Financing constraints and labor misallocation

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Financial Economics
Year: 2019
Volume: 133
Issue: 3
Pages: 589-607

Authors (3)

Caggese, Andrea (Barcelona School of Economics ...) Cuñat, Vicente (not in RePEc) Metzger, Daniel (not in RePEc)

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Firms consider wages, current and expected productivity, as well as firing and hiring costs when firing a worker. Financing constraints distort this intertemporal trade-off, leading firms to sub-optimally fire short-tenured workers with high future expected productivity. We provide empirical evidence of this distortion using matched employer-employee data from the Swedish population between 2000 and 2010. We propose a new empirical strategy that uses credit ratings to identify financing constraints and uses exchange rates and trade data to identify demand shocks. Our empirical results identify an important new misallocation effect of financial frictions that operates within firms across different types of workers.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jfinec:v:133:y:2019:i:3:p:589-607
Journal Field
Finance
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25