External Financing and Customer Capital: A Financial Theory of Markups
构建了一个连续时间垄断竞争行业均衡模型，研究外部融资成本与客户资本如何共同决定产品加价率，发现加价率对企业流动性边际价值的反应在客户基础边际价值更高时更敏感，且产品市场威胁越大，企业财务政策越保守。
We develop a continuous-time industry equilibrium model of monopolistic competition to understand how product markups are determined in the presence of external financing costs and customer capital. Firms optimally set markups to balance the tradeoff between profiting from their existing customer base and developing their future customer base. We characterize how the equilibrium markups are determined by the interaction between the marginal value of corporate liquidity and the marginal value of customer base. Firms’ markups are more responsive to changes in their marginal value of corporate liquidity when the marginal value of customer base is higher. Moreover, the model predicts that greater product market threats lead to more conservative financial policies, which is supported by the data. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.