Financial Constraints, Sectoral Heterogeneity, and the Cyclicality of Investment

Abstract

While investment in most sectors declines in response to a contractionary monetary policy shock, investment in the manufacturing sector increases. Using manually digitized aggregate income and balance sheet data for the universe of US manufacturing firms, I show this increase is driven by the types of firms which are least likely to be financially constrained. A two-sector New Keynesian model with financial frictions can match these facts; unconstrained firms are able to take advantage of the decline in the user cost of capital caused by the monetary contraction while constrained firms are forced to cut back.