Collaborative Research: The Anatomy of Firm Exit: Theory and Facts

企业的退出是造成整体就业损失的一个重要因素。除了失业之外，企业退出还永久性地破坏了无形资本，如客户与企业的关系和品牌声誉。然而，企业退出的潜在驱动因素仍相对未被探索。该项目将研究哪些企业特征最能预测企业退出，并重新关注财务健康。目标是确定哪些公司由于缺乏业务活动的长期可持续性（偿付能力）而失败，而不是由于暂时限制获得资金（流动性不足）。主要假设是，后者在危机时期尤为突出。提供一种理论来解释这种模式背后的市场不完善类型，对于设计有效的政策干预至关重要。拟议的框架将使研究人员能够评估对COVID-19的政策反应是否充分，并提出应对未来经济衰退的潜在改进建议。项目的第一部分将分析研究财务困境对企业退出的影响。pi提出了一个包含金融摩擦的两期企业动态模型。企业能够利用非国家或有债务从金融中介机构借款，以支付固定运营成本。企业可能会选择对现有债务违约。如果他们这样做，金融中介机构可以接管并运营公司，但只需要其初始生产力的一小部分。由于违约期权的存在，企业面临内生的借贷限制，导致企业退出效率低下。虽然无效企业退出或金融摩擦水平不能在数据中直接衡量，但该模型提供了无效企业退出与企业持有债务退出倾向的条件协方差之间的映射。该项目的第二部分旨在从实证角度阐明企业退出的关键驱动因素。使用包括详细财务信息的公司层面数据，pi将描述公司退出倾向对财务特征的敏感性，并记录这种敏感性在商业周期中的变化情况。目标是双重的。首先，在分析模型的透镜下，检验低效企业退出的存在。第二，提供时间来校准模型的定量版本。项目的第三部分量化了企业在经济周期中的无效率退出程度。分析将基于具有总波动和内生企业进入和退出的无限视界模型。pi将使用定量模型来显示，由于企业退出效率低下而造成的福利损失如何取决于衰退的持续时间和深度，以及进入成本的大小。最后，pi将研究旨在缓解企业退出效率低下的不同政策的有效性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Firm exit is a significant contributor to overall job destruction. In addition to the jobs lost, firm exit permanently destroys intangible capital, such as customer-firm relationships and brand reputation. Yet, the underlying drivers of firm exit remain relatively unexplored. This project will study which firm characteristics best predict firm exit, with a renewed focus on financial health. The goal is to determine which firms fail due to lack of long-run sustainability of the business activity (solvency) versus temporary restricted access to funding (illiquidity). The main hypothesis is that the latter is particularly salient in times of crises. Providing a theory that explains the type of market imperfection behind this pattern is crucial in order to design effective policy interventions. The proposed framework will allow researchers to assess whether policy responses to COVID-19 were adequate and suggest potential improvements in addressing future downturns.The first part of the project will study analytically the effect of financial distress on firm exit. The PIs propose a two-period model of firm dynamics with financial frictions. Firms are able to borrow funds from financial intermediaries using non-state-contingent debt to cover fixed operating costs. Firms may choose to default on their existing debt obligations. If they do so, financial intermediaries can take over and operate the firm, but at a fraction of its initial productivity. As a result of the default option, firms face an endogenous borrowing limit, giving rise to inefficient firm exit. While inefficient firm exit or the level of financial frictions cannot be directly measured in the data, the model provides a mapping between inefficient firm exit and the conditional covariance of a firm’s propensity to exit with its debt holdings. The second part of the project aims to shed light empirically on the key drivers of firm exit. Using firm-level data that includes detailed financial information, the PIs will characterize the sensitivity of firms’ propensity to exit to financial characteristics, and document how this sensitivity varies over the business cycle. The goal is two-fold. First, testing for the presence of inefficient firm exit in the lens of the analytical model. Second, providing moments to calibrate a quantitative version of the model. The third part of the project quantifies the degree of inefficient firm exit over the business cycle. The analysis will be based on an infinite-horizon model with aggregate fluctuations and endogenous firm entry and exit. The PIs will use the quantitative model to show how the welfare losses due to inefficient firm exit depend on the length and depth of recessions and on the magnitude of entry costs. Finally, the PIs will study the effectiveness of different policies aimed at alleviating firm exit inefficiencies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.