Paul Butzen () (National Bank of Belgium, Research Department) Catherine Fuss () (National Bank of Belgium, Research Department) Philip Vermeulen () (European Central Bank)
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In this paper we investigate how demand and output price uncertainty affect investment plans of Belgian manufacturing firms. We obtain time-varying uncertainty measures at the firm and industry level from the Belgian monthly business cycle survey and investment plans from the half-yearly investment survey. Using investment plans instead of realised investment data, e.g. annual accounts data, is, from an informative point of view, superior since it is more likely to reveal the features of the decision formation process and, therefore, it is most closely related to economic theory. Business investment is normally planned well in advance, because it involves time and costs to implement, and theory describes the behaviour of firms at the moment of their decision, which can be assumed to be fully captured in survey data. In order to find robust predictions we estimate three different specifications, each of which can be considered as a benchmark in the literature: two reduced form equations and a structural Euler equation. Our results show that uncertainty depresses investment. These results hold for industry- as well as for firmspecific demand uncertainty. Moreover, referring to Euler equation, uncertainty postpones investment today in favour of investment tomorrow. This effect is stronger for firms with more irreversible investment. Hence, our results seem to confirm to predictions of the real option theory.
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Paper provided by National Bank of Belgium in its series Research series with number
200205-5.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D92 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice and Growth, Investment, or Financing E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Capital; Investment; Capacity D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data
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.:
Carlson, John A & Parkin, J Michael, 1975.
"Inflation Expectations,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 42(166), pages 123-38, May.
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