Firm Balance Sheet Liquidity, Monetary Policy Shocks, and Investment Dynamics

• Authors: Priit Jeenas
• BSE Working Paper: 1409 | October 2023
• Keywords: investment, monetary policy, financial frictions, firm heterogeneity
• JEL codes: E22, E32, E44, E52, G31

I study the role of firms’ balance sheet liquidity in the transmission of monetary policy to investment. I develop a heterogeneous firm macroeconomic model with financial constraints, debt issuance costs, and differential returns on firms’ cash and borrowing. The model matches key novel moments from U.S. firm-level data on liquid asset holdings, debt issuance activity, and investment responses to identified monetary shocks. Counterfactual analysis shows that the rise in U.S. firms’ liquid asset holdings over recent decades has significantly increased the relevance of balance sheet liquidity and the behavior of liquid asset returns in monetary transmission.