Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Firm size and the impact of profit-margin uncertainty on investment: do financing constraints play a role?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Vivek Ghosal
  • Prakash Loungani

Abstract

We study the response of investment to changes in uncertainty about future profits. We find that in industries dominated by small firms, an increase in uncertainty about future profits depresses investment; in all other industries, increased uncertainty has virtually no effect (or has a positive effect) on investment. The data set from which these findings emerge is a balanced panel, consisting of annual data from 1958 to 1991 for 252 manufacturing industries in the United States. The theoretical work on this topic points to uncertainty about future profit flows as one of the important actors that determines the ease with which firms can access external credit. The prediction made by the theory is that an increase in uncertainty exacerbates informational asymmetries, and hence makes lenders reduce the flow of credit; this in turn lowers investment in credit-constrained firms. If one is willing to accept firm size as a proxy for access to external credit, then our finding that greater uncertainty lowers investment in small-firm-dominated industries is consistent with the theoretical prediction.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1996/557/default.htm
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1996/557/ifdp557.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series International Finance Discussion Papers with number 557.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 1996
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:557

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20551
Web page: http://www.federalreserve.gov/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Web: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/order.htm

Related research

Keywords: Business enterprises ; Investments;

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1995. "Do Financing Constraints Explain Why Investment is Correlated with Cash Flow?," NBER Working Papers 5267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Robert S. Chirinko, 1992. "Business Fixed Investment Spending: A Critical survey of Modeling Strategies, Empirical Results, and Policy Implications," Working Papers 9213, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  3. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1991. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," NBER Working Papers 3892, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Valerie A. Ramey, 1993. "How Important is the Credit Channel in the Transmission of Monetary Policy?," NBER Working Papers 4285, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. John V. Leahy & Toni M. Whited, 1995. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Investment: Some Stylized Facts," NBER Working Papers 4986, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Schmalensee, Richard., 1987. "Inter-industry studies of structure and performance," Working papers 1874-87., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
  7. Calomiris, Charles W & Hubbard, R Glenn, 1990. "Firm Heterogeneity, Internal Finance, and 'Credit Rationing.'," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(399), pages 90-104, March.
  8. Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, 1990. "Do Firms Care Who Provides Their Financing?," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 63-104 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & BRUCE C. PETERSEN, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
  10. Jason G. Cummins & Kevin A. Hassett & R. Glenn Hubbard, 1994. "A Reconsideration of Investment Behavior Using Tax Reforms as Natural Experiments," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(2), pages 1-74.
  11. Robert S. Chirinko & Huntley Schaller, 1993. "Why does liquidity matter in investment equations?," Research Working Paper 93-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
  12. Caves, Richard E & Porter, Michael E, 1980. "The Dynamics of Changing Seller Concentration," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 1-15, September.
  13. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 2000. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment: Response to Kaplan and Zingales," NBER Working Papers 5462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  14. Craine, Roger, 1989. "Risky business : The allocation of capital," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 201-218, March.
  15. Caballero, Ricardo J, 1991. "On the Sign of the Investment-Uncertainty Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 279-88, March.
  16. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz & Andrew Weiss, 1985. "Informational Imperfections in the Capital Market and Macro-Economic Fluctuations," NBER Working Papers 1335, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  17. Pindyck, Robert S., 1990. "Irreversibility, uncertainty, and investment," Working papers 3137-90., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
  18. Michael Devereux & Fabio Schiantarelli, 1990. "Investment, Financial Factors, and Cash Flow: Evidence from U.K. Panel Data," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 279-306 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  19. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1990. "Macroeconomic Models with Equity and Credit Rationing," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 15-42 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  20. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger & Scott Schuh, 1993. "Small Business and Job Creation: Dissecting the Myth and Reassessing theFacts," NBER Working Papers 4492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  21. Ben Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1987. "Financial Fragility and Economic Performance," NBER Working Papers 2318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  22. Ghosal, Vivek, 1996. "Does uncertainty influence the number of firms in an industry?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 229-236, February.
  23. Domowitz, Ian & Hubbard, R Glenn & Petersen, Bruce C, 1987. "Oligopoly Supergames: Some Empirical Evidence on Prices and Margins," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 379-98, June.
  24. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty: Keeping One's Options Open," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1816-1831, December.
  25. Hsiao,Cheng, 2003. "Analysis of Panel Data," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521522717.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Driffield, Nigel & Pal, Sarmistha, 2001. "The East Asian crisis and financing corporate investment: is there a cause for concern?," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 507-527.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:557

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.