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The Influence of Financial Factors on Corporate Investment

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Author Info
Karen Mills (Reserve Bank of Australia)
Steven Morling (Reserve Bank of Australia)
Warren Tease (Reserve Bank of Australia)
Abstract

Recent theoretical developments have shown that cash flows and the structure of a firm's balance sheet may have an important influence on investment. Establishing a link between cash flows, leverage and investment provides insights into the way that monetary policy and cyclical factors more generally influence the corporate sector. If cash flows are an important determinant of investment, then changes in monetary policy (by changing interest rates) will influence investment through a cash flow effect as well as through altering the rate at which the returns to investment are discounted. If this is the case, the higher leverage of the corporate sector implies, other things being equal, that monetary policy may have a larger impact on investment than in the past. Furthermore, it suggests that the effects of monetary policy will be felt unevenly across the corporate sector. The cash flows of highly geared firms will be more sensitive to changes in interest rates than cash flows of firms with minimal leverage. In this paper we use panel-data analysis to examine the impact of financial factors on investment decisions of firms in the Australian corporate sector. We find strong support for the influence of financial factors on investment decisions. Leverage, internally-generated cash flows, and the stock of cash and liquid financial assets are all important influences on investment behaviour, particularly for smaller firms, highly leveraged firms, and firms with high retention ratios.

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Paper provided by Reserve Bank of Australia in its series RBA Research Discussion Papers with number rdp9402.

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Date of creation: May 1994
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Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp9402

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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.:
  1. Karen Mills & Steve Morling & Warren Tease, 1993. "Balance Sheet Restructuring and Investment," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9308, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  2. Gertler, Mark, 1988. "Financial Structure and Aggregate Economic Activity: An Overview," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(3), pages 559-88, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark, 1989. "Agency Costs, Net Worth, and Business Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 14-31, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Geoffrey Shuetrim & Philip Lowe & Steve Morling, 1993. "The Determinants of Corporate Leverage: A Panel Data Analysis," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9313, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  11. Amihud, Yakov & Lev, Baruch & Travlos, Nickolaos G, 1990. " Corporate Control and the Choice of Investment Financing: The Case of Corporate Acquisitions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 603-16, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Akerlof, George A, 1970. "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Eileen Mauskopf & Jeffrey Fuhrer & Peter Tinsley, 1990. "The transmission channels of monetary policy: how have they changed?," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), issue Dec, pages 985-1008.
  23. McKibbin, Warwick J & Siegloff, Eric S, 1988. "A Note on Aggregate Investment in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 64(186), pages 209-15, September.
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  24. Michael Devereux & Fabio Schiantarelli, 1989. "Investment, Finacial Factors and Cash Flow: Evidence From UK Panel Data," NBER Working Papers 3116, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average q: A Neoclassical Interpretation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 213-24, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Malcolm Edey & John Romalis, 1996. "Issues in Modelling Monetary Policy," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9604, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  2. Guy Debelle & Bruce Preston, 1995. "Consumption, Investment and International Linkages," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9512, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  3. Michael Andersen & Robert Subbaraman, 1996. "Share Prices and Investment," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9610, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  4. Gianni La Cava, 2005. "Financial Constraints, the User Cost of Capital and Corporate Investment in Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2005-12, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
  5. Oleksandr Talavera & Christopher Baum & Mustafa Caglayan & Andreas Stephan, 2005. "Uncertainty Determinants of Corporate Liquidity," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 73, Money Macro and Finance Research Group. [Downloadable!]
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  6. J T Kneeshaw, 1995. "A survey of non-financial sector balance sheets in industialised countries: implications for the monetary policy transmission mechanism," BIS Working Papers 25, Bank for International Settlements. [Downloadable!]
  7. Nicolas de Roos & Bill Russell, 1996. "Towards an Understanding of Australia's Co-movement with Foreign Business Cycles," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9607, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
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