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We use a panel of over 116,000 Chinese firms of different ownership types over the period 2000–2007 to analyze the linkages between investment in fixed and working capital and financing constraints. We find that those firms characterized by high working capital display high sensitivities of investment in working capital to cash flow ( WKS ) and low sensitivities of investment in fixed capital to cash flow ( FKS ). We then construct and analyze firm-level FKS and WKS measures and find that, despite severe external financing constraints, those firms with low FKS and high WKS exhibit the highest fixed investment rates. This suggests that an active management of working capital may help firms to alleviate the effects of financing constraints on fixed investment.

This paper analyzes the decision of firms to sell assets to fund investments (financing asset sales). For a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms during the 1971-2010 period, we document new stylized facts about financing asset sales that cannot be explained by traditional motives for selling assets, such as financial distress or financing constraints. Using a structural model of financing, investment, and acroeconomic risk, we show that financing asset sales attenuate the debt overhang problem, because asset sale financed investments imply lower wealth transfers from equity to debt than otherwise identical but equity financed investments. This novel motive to reduce the debt overhang problem can explain how financing asset sales relate to firm characteristics and business cycles. We also confirm with simulated panels of model firms that are structurally similar to their empirical counterpart that they indeed feature the dynamic patterns of financing asset sales we observe in the data for real firms.

Using a panel of 1122 UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange over the period of 1981 to 2009, endogenous switching regression models (SRM) incorporating a predicted corporate efficiency index are estimated in this paper in an effort to clarify the role of cash flow in examining the impact of capital-market imperfections. It is revealed that a firm's constrained credit status changes with the improvement of its efficiency. The results further reveal that financially constrained firm's investment is comparatively more sensitive to cash flow, but this sensitivity is negatively and significantly related with corporate efficiency. These results point to the fact that high investment sensitivity to cash flow may not be solely driven by measurement error in investment opportunity, but may still be interpreted as a consequence of imperfect substitutability between internal and external financing arising from the capital market imperfections.

We test whether adverse changes to banks' market valuations during the financial and sovereign debt crises, and the associated increase in banks' cost of funding, affected firms' real decisions. Using new data linking over 3,000 non-financial Italian firms to their bank(s), we find that increases in banks' CDS spreads, and decreases in their equity valuations, resulted in lower investment, employment, and bank debt for younger and smaller firms. These effects dominate those of banks' balance-sheet variables. Moreover, CDS spreads matter more than equity valuations. Finally, higher CDS spreads led to lower aggregate investment and employment, and to a less efficient resource allocation.

We study the effect of dynamic and investment externalities in a one-sector growth model. In our model, two agents interact strategically in the utilization of capital for consumption, savings, and investment in technical progress. We consider two types of investment choices: complements and substitutes. For each case, we derive the equilibrium and provide the corresponding stationary distribution. We then compare the equilibrium with the social planner’s solution.

Investment in physical capital at the micro level is infrequent and large, or lumpy. The most common explanation for this is that firms face non-convex physical adjustment costs. The model developed in this paper shows that information costs make investment lumpy at the micro level, even in the absence of non-convex adjustment costs. When collecting and processing information is costly, the firm optimally chooses to do it sporadically and to be inactive most of the time. This behavior results in infrequent and possibly large capital adjustments. The model fits plant-level investment rate moments well, and it also matches some higher order moments of aggregate investment rates. Keywords: investment dynamics, information costs, inattentiveness, lumpy investment JEL classification: D21, D83, D92, E22

This article provides evidence for a particular channel through which sustained terrorism in rural areas may affect growth in developing countries. Using micro-level data from agricultural surveys during the period of insurgency in Punjab (India), I find significant negative effects of terrorism on the level of investment in long-term agricultural technology, but effects are small and insignificant for short-term investment. The presence of a major terrorist incident in a district in a year reduces long-term fixed investment by around 17 percent after controlling for district fixed-effects, time trends, district trends, and other farm-level controls. These negative effects are greater for richer farmers and those living in bordering districts. This results in a farmer losing close to 4 percent of his income annually because of the insurgency.

I study a dynamic economy featuring adverse selection in asset markets. Borrowing constrained entrepreneurs sell past projects to finance new investment, but asymmetric information creates a lemons problem. I show that this friction is equivalent to a tax on financial transactions. The implicit tax rate responds to aggregate shocks, generating amplification in the response of investment and cyclical variation in liquidity. (JEL D82, D92, E32, E44, G31, L15)

We derive robust predictions on the effects of uncertainty on short-run investment dynamics in a broad class of models with (partial) irreversibility. When their environments becomes more uncertain, firms become more cautious and less responsive to demand shocks. This result contrasts with the long-run analysis, in which the effect of real options on the level of the capital stock is ambiguous. An investment model is estimated to test these theoretical predications using a panel of UK firms and a stock returns-based measure of uncertainty. As predicted we find that uncertainty reduces firms' responsiveness to demand shocks.

Natural gas plays an important role in the future development of electricity markets, as it is the least emission-intensive fossil generation option and additionally provides the needed plant operating flexibility to deal with intermittent renewable generation. As both the electricity and the natural gas market rely on networks, congestion in one market may lead to changes in the other. In addition, investment in one market impacts investment in the other market to the extent that these investments may even become substitutes for each another. The objective of this paper is to develop a dynamic model representation of coupled natural gas and electricity network markets to test the potential interaction with respect to investments. The model is tested under simplified conditions as well as for a stylized European network setting. The results indicate that there is sufficient potential for investment substitution and market interactions that warrant the application of coupled models, especially with regard to simulations of long-term system developments.

This paper broadly addresses the financing problems of the innovation process, by analysing the extent to which financial constraints hinder firms' investment in R&D and innovation, as well as investigating the role of public financial support in alleviating such constraints. In order to overcome the problems associated with measuring financial constraints, we make use of both indirect and direct measures of constraints. Our findings suggest that while financial constraints have a perverse effect upon R&D investment and innovation, there is no evidence that subsidies mitigate such constraints. Accordingly, we raise a number of questions regarding the efficiency and effectiveness of subsidies in alleviating firms' financial constraints.

This article looks at the empirical consequences of introducing endogenous capital depreciation in the standard neoclassical model with quadratic adjustment costs. To this end, we formulate an empirical specification that accommodates capital maintenance and utilization in the Euler equations for aggregate investment. The empirical estimates with data from the Canadian Survey on Capital and Repair Expenditures show that, in contrast to the existing literature, the performance of the Euler equations is improved when we account for the impact of variable capital depreciation.

This paper develops a new approach to testing for strategic entry deterrence and applies it to the behavior of pharmaceutical incumbents just before they lose patent protection. The approach involves looking at a cross-section of markets and examining whether behavior is nonmonotonic in the size of the market. Under certain conditions, investment levels will be monotone in market size if firms are not influenced by a desire to deter entry. Strategic investments, however, may be nonmonotone because entry deterrence is unnecessary in very small markets and impossible in very large ones, resulting in overall nonmonotonic investment. The pharmaceutical data contain advertising, product proliferation, and pricing information for a sample of drugs which lost patent protection between 1986 and 1992. Among the findings consistent with an entry deterrence motivation are that incumbents in markets of intermediate size have lower levels of advertising and are more likely to reduce advertising immediately prior to patent expiration.

Entrepreneurs bear substantial risk, but empirical evidence shows no sign of a positive premium. This paper develops a theory of endogenous entrepreneurial risk taking that explains why self-financed entrepreneurs may find it optimal to invest in risky projects offering no risk premium. Consistently with empiri cal evidence, the model predicts that poorer entrepreneurs are more likely to undertake risky projects. It also finds that incentives for risk taking are stronger when agents are impatient. (JEL G31, G32, L25, L26) Entrepreneurial activity is risky and poorly diversified. Most economic models would suggest that the high degree of entrepreneurial risk should be compensated by a significant premium in returns.1 Yet empirical evidence finds that the premium to entrepreneurial activity is surprisingly low,2 which raises the question of why people become entrepreneurs. A number of hypotheses have been offered to answer this question, mostly based on the idea that entrepreneurs have a different set of preferences or beliefs (e.g., risk tolerance or overoptimism). This paper provides an alternative theory of endogenous entrepreneurial risk taking that does not rely on individual heterogeneity of preferences or beliefs. We incorporate endogenous choice of entrepreneurial risk in a simple dynamic occupational choice model. A borrowing constrained agent chooses whether to be a worker or an entrepreneur. The occupational choice is discrete, in the sense that each activity requires full-time involvement. A worker receives fixed wage income, while an entrepreneur gets access to an entrepreneurial technology and decides how much to invest in it. Borrowing constraints induce endogenous sepa ration into different occupations: the rich, who have sufficient funds for investment, choose to be entrepreneurs, and the poor prefer to receive fixed pay by becoming workers. The indivisibility of occupational choice may create a nonconcavity in the agent's value function as a function of

The role of product market reforms in achieving the objective of higher employment and growth has recently received much attention amongst academics. The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the channels through which cross-market effects come about and to assess their policy relevance. The analytic strategy of this paper relies upon the stochastic real options modelling approach. In a nutshell, our simulations using numerical methods indicate that comprehensive product market reforms would increase factor demand and growth significantly in the medium and long run.

We examine the coexistence of banks and financial markets, studying a credit market where the qualities of investment projects are not observable and the investment decisions of entrepreneurs are not contractible. Standard banks can alleviate moral-hazard problems by securing a portion of a repayment in the case of non-investment. Financial markets operated by investment banks and rating agencies have screening know-how and can alleviate adverse-selection problems. In competition, standard banks are forced to increase repayments, since financial markets can attract the highest-quality borrowers. This, in turn, increases the share of shirkers and may make lending unprofitable for standard banks. The coexistence of financial markets and standard banks is socially inefficient. The same inefficiency can happen with the entrance of sophisticated banks, operating with a combination of rating and ongoing monitoring technologies.

When China’s accession to the WTO exposed European firms to import competition, they responded by increasing their investment in innovation. This response was stronger in industries and firms where factors of production were less mobile. Motivated by this evidence, we incorporate “trapped factors” at the micro level into a general equilibrium model of product-cycle trade and growth. In a calibrated version of the model that starts with a baseline growth rate of 2%, trade integration between the OECD and low-wage countries can increase the steady-state growth rate to 2.4% per year. Factors that are trapped at a firm by an unexpected change in trade policy do not change this long-run growth rate, but in the medium run, they could have a noticeable effect on aggregate growth. Simulations of the model show that in the first decade after liberalization, growth jumps to 2.7% per year and that trapped factors account for almost all of the 0.3% = 2.7% − 2.4% increase above the steady state growth rate.

This paper provides an alternative perspective on the firm-level empirical analysis of the relation between foreign ownership and capital demand adjustment in host countries. The author estimates a dynamic structural model of investment on a sample of 4672 Belgian firms for the period 2003-2010, permitting him to distinguish the ‘ownership status’ of firms. He considers a dynamic discrete choice model of a general specification of adjustment costs including convex and non-convex components. The author uses the method of simulated moments in order to estimate the structural parameters. His results indicate that multinationals’ affiliates face lower capital adjustment costs than national firms.

Evaluating an industrial opportunity often means to engage in financial modeling which results in estimation of a large amount of economic and accounting data, which are then gathered in an economically rational framework: the pro forma financial statements. While the standard net present value (NPV) condenses all the available pieces of information into a single metric, we make full use of the crucial information supplied in the pro forma financial statements and give a more detailed account of how economic value is created. In particular, we construct a general model, allowing for varying interest rates, which decomposes the project into investment side and financing side and quantifies the value created by either side; an equity/debt decomposition is also accomplished, which enables to appreciate the role of debt in adding or subtracting value to equityholders. Further, the major role of accounting rates of return as value drivers is highlighted, and new relative measures of worth are introduced: the project ROA and the project WACC, which aggregate information deriving from the period rates of return. To achieve these results, we make use of the Average-Internal-Rate-of-Return (AIRR) approach, recently introduced, which rests on capital-weighted arithmetic means and sets a direct relation between holding period rates and NPV.

If the relation between investment and economic growth is well established in the macroeconomic literature, the existence of a similar link at the level of the firm has been challenged by empirical work. This paper investigates the channels linking investment and firm performance in the French and Italian manufacturing industries. It does so by putting forth a novel methodology to identify investment spikes that corrects for size dependence. While maintaining the desired properties of a spike measure, our chosen proxy retrieves the expected relation between investment and firm performance. Ex-ante, more efficient and fast growing firms display a higher probability to invest; in turn, after an investment spike has taken place the group of investing firms shows further gains in performance. Finally, expansionary investment episodes, as proxied by the opening of new plants, have a negative effect on profitability while they are associated with higher sales and employment levels.

We present a theoretical model in tourism economics, assuming that the market for tourism is an oligopoly with differentiated products. Destinations (i.e., countries, regions, sites or even firms) can invest in order to improve their carrying capacity that can be interpreted as the stock of physical, natural or cultural resources. Tourism flows yield current revenues, but they are usually detrimental for the cultural or natural resource stock over time. We find the solution of the dynamic model, and in particular we find the open-loop Nash equilibrium of the game among the destinations, under alternative settings, depending on whether the arrivals are exogenous or endogenous, and depending on whether the degree of differentiation among destinations is exogenous or endogenous. The model is rather general, and it can provide answers to different specific questions, like the choice between mass- vs. elite-tourism development strategies; the effect of the number of competing products upon profits; the optimal degree of product differentiation.

This paper provides a theory of venture capital financing based on the complementarity between the financing and advising roles of venture capitalists. We examine the interaction between the staging of investment, that characterizes young firms with a high growth potential, and the double-sided moral hazard problem arising from the managerial contributions of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The optimal contractual arrangements have features that resemble the securities actually employed in venture capital financing. In particular, we identify an incentive-related insurance motive for making the initial financier bear the start-up's downside risk, as well as a financing motive for protecting him against dilution. This can explain the widespread use of convertible preferred stock.

In the literature investigating the impact of uncertainty on short-run and long-run investment, most authors have used a log linear profit function. This functional form has been generally considered a reasonable approximation for a more general one and has the advantage of providing closed form solutions for both short-run investment rule and long-run rate of capital accumulation. In this paper, we consider the profit function for the case of a monopolistic firm facing a linear demand function with additive shocks. Under this assumption, analytical solutions, for both short-run investment rule and long-run rate of capital accumulation, are not available. We then 1) propose an analytical approximation of the short-run investment rule and 2) show how such approximation can be used in order to derive the corresponding i) steady-state distribution of the optimal stock of capital and ii) the long-run average rate of capital accumulation. Finally, we compare the long-run rates of capital accumulation calculated under both profit function specifications. We find that, within a plausible range of parameter values, the two rates are significantly different. Hence, we conclude that the choice of a log linear functional form has a non-trivial impact on the magnitude of the long run rate of capital accumulation.

The investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can limit investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in which farmers were randomly assigned to receive cash grants, grants of or opportunities to purchase rainfall index insurance, or a combination of the two. Demand for index insurance is strong, and insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier production choices in agriculture. The binding constraint to farmer investment is uninsured risk: when provided with insurance against the primary catastrophic risk they face, farmers are able to find resources to increase expenditure on their farms. Demand for insurance in subsequent years is strongly increasing with the farmer’s own receipt of insurance payouts, with the receipt of payouts by others in the farmer’s social network and with recent poor rain in the village. Both investment patterns and the demand for index insurance are consistent with the presence of important basis risk associated with the index insurance, imperfect trust that promised payouts will be delivered and overweighting recent events.

Several recent studies have shown that uncertainty affects investment decisions. Specifically, demand and/or price uncertainty are found to depress corporate investment in e.g. the United States. This paper investigates whether similar results hold for Belgium and Spain, countries where financial markets are less developped and many firms evidently face financial constraints. Uncertainty of demand, output prices and investment prices are measured by the standard deviation of (pre-)filtered Belgian (1984-1992) and Spanish (1983-1993) panel data, and included as explanatory variables in the investment equations derived from a neo-classical model. The results indicate that investment behaviour towards uncertainty differs significantly between low- and high-leveraged firms in both Belgium and Spain.

This paper mathematically treats the following economic problem: A company wants to expand its capacity in investments that are irreversible. The problem is to find the best investment strategy taking the fluctuating market into account. We give some implicit conditions for a solution in the case where the market process is n-dimensional and an explicit solution in the one dimensional case.

Building on evidence that (a) productivity growth from learning by doing diminishes as experience accumulates with a technology and (b) learning by doing is largely specific to each production technology, this paper models a firm's decision of when to update its technology. The model implies that technology updates endogenously bring large drops in productivity. The model also implies that technology updates are more likely in a boom than in a recession since a high rate of production enables the firm to learn more quickly about the new technology. The forces in this model may help explain some features of plant and industry level data, such as the procyclicality of investment (including plant investment spikes) and the modest correlation between labor input and productivity. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: O31, L6, D92.

In this paper the corporate investment decision under financial restrictions is investigated with Belgian firm data from 1984 to 1992. An investment Euler equation is derived from a dynamic optimization model with debt ceilings and an elastic credit supply. The model is estimated by GMM for different firm groups. An important aspect is that the sample is split according to a firm's association with coordination centers. These centers have become the major external funding source of corporate investment in Belgium since 1986. The estimation results show the dependence of corporate investment on financial factors, both for non-coordination center as well as coordination center firms. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.

This paper develops a model of investment decisions in which uncertainty about a one-time change in tax policy induces the firm to temporarily stop investing—to adopt a wait-and-see policy. After the uncertainty is resolved, the firm exploits the tabled projects, generating a temporary investment boom.

In this paper we attempt to investigate the importance of certain external factors on the investment decision among Polish companies. With the use of data from the tailored made Survey on Receivables we examine factors influencing investment decisions of companies in Poland, assess the relation between the branch and company size and importance of the factors and finally we determine the relative influence of these factors on the actual investment reductions. The results showed that first, although the problem of payment delays is the most important single reason determining the investment decisions of Polish companies, its importance decreases when analyzed simultaneously with other reasons. Second, there are two driving forces determining the investment decisions of Polish companies, namely macroeconomic factors and law-related factors with the relative importance of the former lower than the latter. Third, there is a positive association between the importance attached to factors influencing investment decisions associated with either macroeconomic or legal environment and the investment reductions, meaning that companies facing higher investment reductions are also more prone to notice and value the factors influencing these decisions., JRC.DDG.01-Econometrics and applied statistics

We study the investment timing problem where two firms that compete for investment preemption know in advance the time at which the economic condition changes. We show that the so-called Bad News Principle applies to the leader firm’s investment decision near maturity in many cases. This result indicates that the option value to wait does have an impact even in a competitive situation, which is in contrast to the previous literature.

We provide theoretical and empirical evidence that policy uncertainty can significantly affect firm level investment and entry decisions in the context of international trade. When market entry costs are sunk, policy uncertainty can create a real option value of waiting to enter foreign markets until conditions improve or uncertainty is resolved. Using a dynamic, heterogeneous firms model we show that: (i) investment and entry into export markets is reduced when trade policy is uncertain, and (ii) preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are valuable to exporters even if applied trade barriers are currently low or zero. We derive a structural equation that predicts how firm entry responds to changes in applied tariffs and a theory-based measure of policy uncertainty. Our novel approach using observable trade policies allows us to estimate the impact of policy uncertainty and quantify its aggregate implications. We apply this method to Portugal's accession to the European Community in 1986 using new firm-level trade data. We find that (i) the trade policy reform accounted for a large fraction of the observed Portuguese exporting firms' entry and sales upon accession (ii) the accession removed uncertainty about future preferences and (iii) this uncertainty channel accounted for a large fraction of the predicted growth. These results have broader implications for other PTAs and our approach can be applied to analyze other sources of policy uncertainty.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) develop their networks of foreign affiliates gradually over time. Instead of exploring all profitable opportunities immediately, they first establish themselves in their home countries and then enter new markets stepwise. We argue that this behavior is driven by uncertainty concerning a firm’s success in new markets. After entry, the firm collects information which is used to update its beliefs about its performance at a market. As conditions in different markets are correlated, the information gathered in one of them can also be used to update beliefs elsewhere – with the degree of correlation depending on issues such as the geographical or cultural distance between markets. This correlated learning may render it optimal to enter markets sequentially – an investment in market A is only followed by entry in market B if the firm was sufficiently successful in A. The prediction that firms start their expansion in markets that are closer to their home base and then proceed step by step is supported by our empirical analysis, which features the universe of foreign affiliates held by German multinationals. Based on a rich set of benchmark estimates and sensitivity checks, we identify correlated learning across markets beyond alternative explanations as a key driver of gradualism in the genesis of multinational foreign affiliate networks.

We document a new business cycle fact: the cross-sectional standard deviation of firm-level investment (investment dispersion) is robustly and significantly procyclical. This makes investment dispersion different from the dispersion of productivity and output growth, which is countercyclical. Investment dispersion is more procyclical in the goods-producing sectors, for smaller firms and for structures. We show that a heterogeneous-firm real business cycle model with countercyclical idiosyncratic firm risk and non-convex adjustment costs calibrated to match moments of the long-run investment rate distribution, produces a time series correlation coefficient between investment dispersion and aggregate output of 0.58, close to the 0.45 in the data. We argue, more generally, that cross-sectional business cycle dynamics impose tight empirical restrictions on the physical environments and the structural parameters of heterogeneous-firm models.

This paper adds to the literature on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's net effects by looking at whether its passage was associated with a change in innovation and patenting. Its effects are separated into temporary uncertainty and changes in long term investment incentives in a dynamic programming problem faced by innovators who learn over time about SOX's effect. Innovation is found to fall under uncertainty for potential losses that are low relative to the potential profits. As companies learn, innovation rates readjust to SOX's long term persistent effect. We examine US patenting in stem cell technologies from 2001 to 2009 for SOX related changes. To reduce the dependence of our estimates on timing assumptions, we look for changes over the whole period. We firstly use a rolling break test with a single break point with Monte Carlo correction to p-values for search process endogeneity and MLE bias. Secondly, we run a hidden Markov model allowing for multiple states in the patent process and transitions between the states. We find a large and statistically significant change at a date consistent with a SOX effect under both testing methods. A three state hidden Markov model finds subsequent correction consistent with the theoretical model. Four competing explanations are found to account incompletely for the observed data.

We study how learning affects an uninformed monopolist's supply and investment decisions under multiplicative uncertainty in demand. The monopolist is uninformed because it does not know one of the parameters defining the distribution of the random demand. Observing prices reveals this information slowly. We first show how to incorporate Bayesian learning into dynamic programming by focusing on sufficient statistics and conjugate families of distributions. We show their necessity in dynamic programming to be able to solve dynamic programs either analytically or numerically. This is important since it is not true that a solution to the infinite-horizon program can be found either analytically or numerically for any kinds of distributions. We then use specific distributions to study the monopolist's behavior. Specifically, we rely on the fact that the family of normal distributions with an unknown mean is a conjugate family for samples from a normal distribution to obtain closed-form solutions for the optimal supply and investment decisions. This enables us to study the effect of learning on supply and investment decisions, as well as the steady state level of capital. Our findings are as follows. Learning affects the monopolist's behavior. The higher the expected mean of the demand shock given its beliefs, the higher the supply and the lower the investment. Although learning does not affect the steady state level of capital since the uninformed monopolist becomes informed in the limit, it reduces the speed of convergence to the steady state.

This paper develops an analytically-tractable general-equilibrium model of inventory dynamics based on a precautionary stockout-avoidance motive. The model’s predictions are broadly consistent with the U.S. business cycle and key features of inventory behavior, including (i) a large inventory stock-to-sales ratio and a small inventory investment-to-sales ratio in the long run, (ii) excess volatility of production relative to sales, (iii) procyclical inventory investment but countercyclical stock-to-sales ratio over the business cycle, and (iv) more volatile input inventories than output inventories. It is also shown that technological improvement of inventory management (that eliminates production/ordering lags) can increase, rather than decrease, the volatility of aggregate output. Key to this seemingly counter-intuitive result is that a stockout- avoidance motive leads to procyclical liquidity-value of inventories (hence, procyclical relative prices of output), which acts as an automatic stabilizer that discourages final sales in a boom and encourages final sales during a recession, thereby reducing the variability of GDP.

When an agent invests in new industrial activities, he has a limited initial knowledge of his project's returns. Acquiring information allows him both to reduce the uncertainty on the dangerousness of this project and to limit potential damages that it might cause on people's health and on the environment. In this paper, we study whether there exist situations in which the agent does not acquire information. We find that an agent with time-consistent preferences, as well as an agent with hyperbolic ones, will acquire information unless its cost exceeds the direct benefit they could get with this information. Nevertheless, a hyperbolic agent may remain strategically ignorant and, when he does acquire information, he will acquire less information than a time-consistent type. Moreover, a hyperbolic-discounting type who behaves as a time-consistent agent in the future is more inclined to stay ignorant. We then emphasize that this strategic ignorance depends on the degree of precision of the information. Finally, we analyse the role that existing liability rules could play as an incentive to acquire information under uncertainty and with regard to the form of the agent's preferences.

Exclusive rights granted by public authorities, like concessions to develop natural resources or electromagnetic spectrum licences, often have option-like features. However, to avoid licences being unused for lengthy periods, regulators sometimes set time limits, after which the exclusive right of exercise may be revoked. In this paper we analyse the impact of use or lose ("UOL") provisions upon the private time of investment. We find that the risk of losing the licence because of inaction generally increases the probability of early investment. However, when capital costs are expected to decline over time, UOL provisions may involve a "perverse effect", by increasing, rather than reducing, the expected time of investment, with respect to a situation where the date of investment is left entirely to the licencee’s discretion.

In this paper we present a dynamic model of a firm which is deciding whether to outsource parts of its production to a less developed economy where wages and the level of technology are lower. Outsourcing reduces production costs but is associated with spillovers to foreign potential competitors. Spillovers over time increase productivity of firms in the foreign country and make them stronger competitors on the common market. The paper analyzes the inter-temporally optimal behavior of the firm and shows that two outcomes are possible in the long-run. One outcome is that there is one steady state where the firm invests a positive amount in the foreign country and the other outcome is a continuum of steady states with no investment. The paper then derives conditions such that it is optimal for the firm to invest in the foreign country and characterizes different types of optimal dynamic investment patterns. In addition, using numerical dynamic optimization methods, the effect of the speed of technology adoption and of the wage differential on total labor income in the home country is studied taking into account the transition dynamics. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper models the investment behavior of a multi‐asset firm with market power that accumulates valuable intangible assets to complement the IT capital. The investment model is estimated using data from Spanish banks on assets of different nature: material (branches, financial), immaterial (advertising and IT), and intangible (training of workers). The paper estimates that the representative bank spends five additional Euros per Euro invested in IT‐related assets in complementary intangible assets or, equivalently, intangibles amount to approximately 10 percent of the economic value of the representative bank. The remaining economic value is distributed between 28 percent from rents attributed to market power, and 62 percent to the cost of market‐purchased assets.

International audience; This paper studies how the assignment of patents as collateral determines the savings of firms and magnifies the effect of innovative rents on investment in research and development (R&D). We analyse the behaviour of innovative firms that face random and lumpy investment opportunities in R&D. High growth rates of innovations, possibly higher than the real rate of interest, may be achieved despite financial constraints. There is an optimal level of publicly funded policy by the patent and trademark office that minimizes the legal uncertainty surrounding patents as collateral and maximizes the growth rate of innovations.

It seems that firms behave contrary to the standard economic theory of investment. We observe that firms do not invest as soon a price rises above long-run average cost; instead firms wait until price rises substantially above long-run average cost. On the downside, firms stay in business for lengthy periods while absorbing operating losses, and price can fall substantially below average variable cost without inducing disinvestment or exit. Recent developments in the theory of investment under uncertainty offer an interesting new explanation. The new approach builds on an interesting analogy between real investments and options in financial markets: In the timing of investment, waiting has positive value because time brings more information about the future prospects of a project. This new approach suggests that textbook pictures of the dynamics of a competitive industry need to be substantially redrawn. More generally, it says that a great deal of inertia is optimal when dynamic decisions are being made in an uncertain environment.

The welfare effects of private equity transactions are debated controversially. We analyze the impact of expansion financing and buyouts by private equity investors on investment of portfolio firms in the UK and France - two countries with different financial systems. Unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of private equity transactions financed by venture capital companies are addressed using dynamic panel data techniques. In both countries we find that portfolio firms display higher investment levels and a lower dependence on internal funds after expansion financing. Buyouts financed by venture capital companies are neither associated with a decrease in investment spending nor with an increase in the dependence on internal finance. In contrary, private equity based buyouts in the UK outperform non-private equity backed British firms in terms of both indicators. Contrasting the notion of several policy makers,we cannot detect that private equity based buyout financing yields higher financial constraints on average.

We present a dynamic model of venture capital financing, described as a sequential investment problem with uncertain outcome. Each venture has to pass a sequence of milestones, and there is a chance of terminal failure in each milestone. The investors decide sequentially about the speed of the investment and, due to contract frictions and agency costs, will optimally structure investments in a discrete sequence of staged investments. We derive the dynamically optimal funding policy in response to the arrival of information during the development of the venture. We develop three types of predictions from our theoretical model and test these predictions in a large sample of venture capital investments in the U.S. for the period of 1987-2002. First, the investment flow starts low if the failure risk is high and accelerates as the projects mature. Second, the investment flow reacts positively to information that arrives while the project is developed. We find that the investment decisions are more sensitive to the information received during the development than to the information held prior to the project launch. Third, investors distribute their investments over more funding rounds if the failure risk is larger.

This paper presents a two-period model of talent investments where two clubs compete with respect to a contest prize. We show that two qualitatively different types of equilibria are possible using a closed-loop approach with strictly convex costs: The large market club invests in both periods more than the small market club or the small market club invests in both periods more than the large market club. In case of an open-loop approach with strictly convex costs, however, the large market club always invests more. The open-loop and closed-loop equilibria coincide if costs are linear.

In a standard adverse selection world, asymmetric information about product quality leads to quality deterioration in the market. Suppose that a higher investment level makes the realization of high quality more likely. Then, if consumers observe the investment (but not the realization of product quality) before purchase, they can infer the probability distribution of high and low quality that may be put on the market. We uncover two effects that may lead the firm to overinvest in quality compared to a market with full information: first, an adverse selection effect according to which a sufficiently large investment can avoid adverse selection and, second, an efficiency effect according to which a larger investment reduces the probability of having in the market low quality products that are not socially valuable.

This paper studies the macroeconomic implications of firms' investment composition choices in the presence of credit constraints. Following a negative and persistent aggregate productivity shock, firms shift into short-term investments because they produce more pledgeable output and because they help alleviate future borrowing constraints. This produces a short-run dampening of the effects of the shock, at the expense of lower long-term investment and future output, relative to an economy with no credit market imperfections. The effects are exacerbated by a steepening of the term structure of interest rates that further encourages a shift towards short-term investments in the short-run. Small temporary shocks to the severity of financing frictions generate large and long-lasting effects on output through their impact on the composition of investment. A positive financial shock produces much stronger effects than an identical negative shock, while the responses to positive and negative shocks to aggregate productivity are roughly symmetric. Finally, the paper introduces a novel explanation for the countercyclicality of financing constraints of firms.

Using European data, this paper finds that (1) industry entry and exit rates are positively related to industry rates of investment-specific technical change (ISTC); (2) the sensitivity of industry entry and exit rates to cross-country differences in entry costs depends on industry rates of ISTC. The paper constructs a general equilibrium model in which the rate of ISTC varies across industries and new investment-specific technologies can be introduced by entrants or by incumbents. In the calibrated model, equilibrium behavior is consistent with stylized facts (1) and (2), provided the cost of technology adoption is increasing in the rate of ISTC.

Capacity addition and withdrawal decisions are among the most important strategic decisions made by firms in oligopolistic industries. In this paper, we develop and analyze a fully dynamic model of an oligopolistic industry with lumpy capacity and lumpy investment/disinvestment. We use our model to suggest answers to two questions: First, what economic factors facilitate preemption races? Second, what economic factors facilitate capacity coordination? With a series of examples we show that low product differentiation, low investment sunkness, and high depreciation tend to promote preemption races. The same examples also show that low product differentiation and low investment sunkness tend to promote capacity coordination. Although depreciation removes capacity, it might impede capacity coordination. Finally, our examples show that multiple equilibria arise over at least some range of parameter values. The distinct structures of these equilibria suggest that firms' expectations play a key role in determining whether or not industry dynamics are characterized by preemption races and capacity coordination. Taken together, our results suggest that preemption races and excess capacity in the short run often go hand-in-hand with capacity coordination in the long run.