Industrial Firms and Systemic Risk

Abstract

We investigate the systemic importance of U.S. industrial firms and analyse the firm-specific characteristics that identify systemically important industrials. We compute two firm-specific measures of systemic risk for 367 non-financial corporations and confirm that industrial firms are both vulnerable to systemic shocks and contribute to system-wide risk. Systemic risk measures exhibit substantial variation across firms and over time. Debt and trade credit are related to both dimensions of systemic risk, while a range of other firm characteristics are associated with systemic risk in at least one direction. The differences between the dimensions of risk and their associated characteristics underline the importance of analysing both measures of risk. Finally, we report some striking differences vis-à-vis the extant literature on banks and non-bank financials.