Recent theoretical models conjecture that the development of the financial sector is essential for economic growth. We investigate this hypothesis from a time-series perspective and find that financial sector GDP is cointegrated for many OECD countries not so much with manufacturing GDP but mostly with manufacturing total factor productivity. Moreover, this relation is in some instances characterized by long-run causality in the sense of Granger and Lin. However, even within this homogeneous group of countries, the variety of results suggests a more complex picture than is apparent from cross-sectional evidence.

We analyze nonlinear adjustments of capital and labor using plant data from the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey, allowing for interdependence in adjustments of the two factors. We find nonlinear employment and capital adjustments. We also find that capital shortages reduce hiring, and labor surpluses reduce capital shedding. Moreover, we find that job destruction and capital formation increased after factor market deregulation in Colombia. Finally, we find that completely eliminating frictions in factor adjustment would yield a substantial increase in aggregate productivity through improved allocative efficiency, but that the actual impact of the Colombian deregulation on productivity was modest.