Booms, Busts, and Mismatch in Capital Markets: Evidence from the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

How efficiently do markets reallocate capital in booms and busts? Using a novel dataset of offshore drilling contracts, I examine the role of matching in shaping industry reallocation. Oil companies search and match with capital (rigs) in a decentralized market. I find that oil and gas booms increase the option value of searching, which leads agents to avoid bad matches, reducing mismatch through a sorting effect. I provide an identification strategy to disentangle unobserved demand changes from the sorting effect. Estimating a model, I find substantial benefits to the sorting effect and an intermediary, but I find that demand-smoothing policies are ineffective.