skip to content

Cambridge Finance

 

Talk by Gabor Pinter

Capital in the Business Cycle: Renting versus Ownership:

 

This paper studies how business cycle dynamics are affected by the possibility to rent as opposed to own productive capital. We provide empirical evidence based on firm-level data for the US which confirms the counter-cyclicality of the share of renting in capital expenditure over the business cycle. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with borrowing constraints and two types of agents, and allow for both owned and rented capital to be used in production. The model focuses on a fundamental trade-off between the two types of capital: only owned capital can serve as collateral, but owning requires more liquidity than renting. The model performs well in replicating the counter-cyclical behavior of the rental share and matching some of the key business cycle moments observed in the data. Finally, simulation results show that the presence of a renting sector alleviates the adverse impacts of a negative financial shock, and these results are confirmed by empirical cross-country evidence.

Date: 
Tuesday, 14 February, 2012 - 17:00 to 18:00
Contact name: 
Sheryl Anderson
Contact email: 
Subject: 
Event location: 
Lucia Windsor Room, Newnham College
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
 
 
 
 
1
 
2
 
3
 
4
 
5
 
6
 
7
 
8
 
9
 
10
 
11
 
12
 
13
 
14
 
15
 
16
 
17
 
18
 
19
 
20
 
21
 
22
 
23
 
24
 
25
 
26
 
27
 
28
 
29
 
30
 
31