Capital Allocation and Productivity in South Europe
Gita Gopinath, Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Loukas Karabarbounis and Carolina Villegas-Sanchez ,
NBER Working Paper
July
2015
Abstract

Following the introduction of the euro in 1999, countries in the South experienced large capital inflows and low productivity. We use data for manufacturing firms in Spain to document a significant increase in the dispersion of the return to capital across firms, a stable dispersion of the return to labor across firms, and a significant increase in productivity losses from misallocation over time. We develop a model of heterogeneous firms facing financial frictions and investment adjustment costs.

Links to Researchers