The Response of Corporate Financing and Investment to Changes in the Supply of Credit

Abstract

We examine how shocks to the supply of credit impact corporate financing and investment using the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc., the passage of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, and regulatory changes in the insurance industry as an exogenous contraction in the supply of below-investment-grade credit after 1989. A difference-in-differences empirical strategy coupled with a variety of treatment-control comparisons reveals that substitution to bank debt and alternative sources of capital (e.g., equity, cash balances, trade credit) was extremely limited. Consequently, net investment decreased almost one-for-one with the contraction in net issuing activity. Further, the impact of the credit contraction on financing and investment varied cross-sectionally as a function of geographic heterogeneity in the cost of bank capital and the credit risk of borrowers. Despite this sharp change in behavior, corporate leverage ratios remained relatively stable, a result of the contemporaneous decline in debt issuances and investment. Overall, our findings highlight how even large firms with access to public credit markets are susceptible to fluctuations in the supply of capital.