This paper studies the quantitative relevance of the cross-sectional dispersion of corporate financial structure in explaining the intra-industry allocation efficiency of productive factors. I solve a heterogeneous firms model with financial constraints and distortions to the marginal rental-rate of capital, and develop a measure for the intra-industry misallocation of factors of production. The distribution of capital rental rate and two types of firm-level balance sheet characteristics (pledgeability and liquid asset positions) determine the extent of misallocation and industry level total factor productivity (TFP). I calibrate the model using firm-level balance sheet data from seven major industry clusters of the US economy. The counterfactual policy experiments show that weakening the observed balance sheet positions for financially constrained firms leads to a reallocation of production factors from firms with high cost distortions to firms with low cost distortions and cause quantitatively important industry level TFP losses.

Cross-country aggregate data exhibits a strong (positive) relationship between the size of the informal employment and aggregate homeownership rates. We investigate this empirical observation using a cash-in-advance model with housing markets and argue that the rate of inflation is important in explaining the nexus between informality and homeownership rates. Specifically, we uncover a novel monetary transmission mechanism and show that households with informal employment desire to economize on their short-term cash usage and avoid periodic rental payments when (i) informality is associated with constrained business investment finance, and (ii) inflation expectations are high. Our empirical and theoretical findings highlight an important interaction between the conduct of monetary policy and the performance of housing markets.