We study the role of heterogeneity in firms' financial positions in determining the investment channel of monetary policy. Empirically, we show that firms with low leverage or high credit ratings are the most responsive to monetary policy shocks. We develop a heterogeneous firm New Keynesian model with default risk to interpret these facts and study their aggregate implications. In the model, firms with high default risk are less responsive to monetary shocks because their marginal cost of external finance is high. The aggregate effect of monetary policy therefore depends on the distribution of default risk across firms.
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