Monetary Policy Shocks, Financial Structure, and Firm Activity: A Panel Approach

This paper assesses the differences in how nonfinancial firms respond to high frequency identified monetary policy shocks conditional on various measures of their financial conditions. In line with the effects of monetary policy shocks on real aggregate activity, the most significant disparities between firms arise slowly, over a horizon of approximately 4 to 12 quarters after a shock. Among the explanatory financial variables considered, both higher leverage and lower liquid asset holdings at the time of a contractionary monetary shock tend to predict relatively lower fixed capital, inventory and sales growth in the cross-section of firms. When simultaneously controlling for both the relevance of leverage and liquid assets, it is the latter that explains the disparities over the longer horizon. Low liquid asset holdings are also shown to be associated with stronger pass-through to borrowing costs.