We study corporate real estate frictions and their effect on firm dynamics and labour demand. We build and simulate a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms that predicts the response of firms to a productivity shock in the presence of fixed adjustment costs on real estate. Using a large firm-level database merged with local real estate prices, we then exploit variations in the tax on capital gains to document a causal effect of adjustment costs on firms' labour demand and derive new results on the causes and implications of firms' local relocation.

In this paper, we investigate the effect of real estate prices on productive investment. We build a simple theoretical framework of firms' investment with credit rationing and real estate collateral. We show that real estate prices affect firms' borrowing capacities through two channels.An increase in real estate prices raises the value of the firms' pledgeable assets and mitigates the agency problem characterizing the creditor-entrepreneur relationship. It simultaneously cuts the expected profit due to the increase in the cost of inputs. While the literature only focuses on the first channel, the identification of the second channel allows for heterogeneous effects of real estate prices on investment across firms.We test our theoretical predictions using a large French database. We do find heterogeneous effects of real estate prices on productive investment depending on the position of the firms in the sectoral distributions of real estate holdings. Our preferred estimates indicate that a 10% increase in real estate prices causes a 1% decrease in the investment rate of firms in the lowest decile of the distribution but a 6% increase in the investment rate of firms belonging to the highest decile.

Through a time-varying VAR model with drifting parameters and stochastic volatilities (Cogley and Sargent, 2005, Primiceri, 2005), we explore nonlinearities on the French housing and credit markets, which give rich insights on the persistent bubble of the 2000s. While the price increase took place during a period of low shock variance, shock persistence increased during this period, as well as the elasticity relative to demography and income. Low reactivity of the housing stock to housing prices may create construction bottlenecks and explain these nonlinearities. However, even though our framework is very flexible, part of the price increase remains unexplained.

The size of the premises in which firms operate clearly imposes an upper limit to their business volume and their employment level and may be a potential hindrance to the growth of dynamic firms. In this paper, we develop a partial equilibrium model in which a representative firm makes a decision on relocation and employment level considering the firm-level productivity path and the costs associated to relocation. We predict that relocation costs primarily hinder the employment growth of firms affected by an increase in productivity. Confronting these results using French firm-level data over the period 1994-2013, and covering all sectors, we find that,(i) local relocations have sizable effects on employment growth of both growing and declining firms; (ii) higher relocation costs lower firms’ propensity to move; (iii) higher relocation costs constrain job creation of the most dynamic firms. We find that the highlighted mechanism has substantial macroeconomic effect: our preferred estimates suggest that a reduction of the relocation costs, through the removal of one of the identified tax friction, increases the firms’ propensity to move by 11% and raises the yearly employment growth rate of the 10% fastest growing firms by 4%. JEL classification: D21, D22, H25, J21, O52, R30

The value of land in the balance sheet of French firms correlates positively with their hiring and investment flows. To explore the relationship between these variables, we develop a macroeconomic model with firms that are subject to both credit and labor market frictions. The value of collateral is driven by the forward-looking dynamics of the land price which reacts endogenously to fundamental and non-fundamental (sunspot) shocks. We calibrate the model to French data and find that land price shocks give rise to significant amplification and hump-shaped responses of investment, vacancies and unemployment that are in line with the data. We show that both the endogenous movements in the firms’ discount factor and the sluggish response of the land price are key elements that drive the results.

The value of land in the balance sheet of French firms correlates positively with their hiring and investment flows. To explore the relationship between these variables, we develop a macroeconomic model with firms that are subject to both credit and labor market frictions. The value of collateral is driven by the forward-looking dynamics of the land price, which reacts endogenously to fundamental and non-fundamental (sunspot) shocks. We calibrate the model to French data and find that land price shocks give rise to significant amplification and hump-shaped responses of investment, vacancies and unemployment that are in line with the data. We show that both the endogenous movements in the firms’ discount factor and the sluggish response of the land price are key elements that drive the results. JEL classification: E24, E32, E44