IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cbi/qtbart/y2014m01p76-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trends in Business Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Lydon, Reamonn

    (Central Bank of Ireland)

  • Scally, John

    (Central Bank of Ireland)

Abstract

This article examines trends in business investment in Ireland. Consistent with the international evidence on investment cycles, we show that business investment in Ireland exhibits large cyclical movements around a long-run trend relative to GDP. Changes in business investment broadly coincide with the overall business cycle, although swings in investment tend to be far greater, with extended periods of both over- and under-investment relative to GDP. The sharp fall in business investment since 2007 is largely explained by both the rapid slowdown and subsequent fall in GDP growth, and the previous cycle of over-investment which resulted in an elevated business investment to GDP ratio relative to the long-run trend. We look at the importance of the various factors driving investment using a simple econometric model. The model indicates that, in addition to GDP, other factors such as the cost of capital, the availability of credit and changes in capital gains (asset prices) may also play role.

Suggested Citation

  • Lydon, Reamonn & Scally, John, 2014. "Trends in Business Investment," Quarterly Bulletin Articles, Central Bank of Ireland, pages 76-89, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:cbi:qtbart:y:2014:m:01:p:76-89
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://centralbank.ie/docs/default-source/publications/quarterly-bulletins/qb-archive/2014/qb1-2014.pdf?sfvrsn=6#page=78
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karnit Flug & Zvi Hercowitz, 2000. "Equipment Investment and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: International Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(3), pages 461-485, July.
    2. Mojon, Benoît & Agresti, Anna Maria, 2001. "Some stylised facts on the euro area business cycle," Working Paper Series 95, European Central Bank.
    3. Colin Ellis & Simon Price, 2003. "UK business investment: long-run elasticities and short-run dynamics," Bank of England working papers 196, Bank of England.
    4. Hasan Bakhshi & Jens Larsen, 2001. "Investment-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Empirical studies of structural changes and inflation, volume 3, pages 49-80, Bank for International Settlements.
    5. Znuderl, Nusa & Kearney, Ide, 2013. "User Cost of Debt-Financed Capital in Irish Manufacturing Industry: 1985 ? 2011," Papers WP448, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    6. Bean, Charles R, 1981. "An Econometric Model of Manufacturing Investment in the UK," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(361), pages 106-121, March.
    7. Bakhshi, Hasan & Larsen, Jens, 2005. "ICT-specific technological progress in the United Kingdom," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 648-669, December.
    8. Lawless, Martina & McCann, Fergal, 2012. "The Irish SME lending market - a snapshot, December 2010," Economic Letters 03/EL/12, Central Bank of Ireland.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Lawless, Martina & O'Toole, Conor & Lambert, Derek, 2014. "Financing SMEs in Recovery: Evidence for Irish Policy Options," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT276.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Björn A. Hauksson, 2005. "Aggregate business fixed investment," Economics wp27_bjorn, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    2. Oulton, Nicholas, 2007. "Investment-specific technological change and growth accounting," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1290-1299, May.
    3. Hashmat Khan & Marjorie Santos, 2002. "Contribution of ICT Use to Output and Labour-Productivity Growth in Canada," Staff Working Papers 02-7, Bank of Canada.
    4. Andres, Javier & Domenech, Rafael & Fatas, Antonio, 2008. "The stabilizing role of government size," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 571-593, February.
    5. Cesaroni, Tatiana & Maccini, Louis & Malgarini, Marco, 2011. "Business cycle stylized facts and inventory behaviour: New evidence for the Euro area," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 12-24, September.
    6. Domenico Delli Gatti & Mauro Gallegati, 2004. "Weird Ties? : Growth, Cycles and Firms Dynamics in an Agent Based-Model with Financial Market Imperfections," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 288, Society for Computational Economics.
    7. Baker, Jessica & Carreras, Oriol & Kirby, Simon & Meaning, Jack & Piggott, Rebecca, 2016. "Modelling events: The short-term economic impact of leaving the EU," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 339-350.
    8. Aleksandar Vasilev, 2020. "An RBC model with investment-specific technological change: lessons for Bulgaria (1999–2018)," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 511-524, May.
    9. Ludmila Fadejeva & Aleksejs Melihovs, 2008. "The Baltic states and Europe: common factors of economic activity," Baltic Journal of Economics, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, vol. 8(1), pages 75-96, October.
    10. Angelos VOULDIS & Panayotis MICHAELIDES & John MILIOS, 2008. "Do Technology Shocks affect Output and Profitability over the Business Cycle in Greece (1960-2008)?," EcoMod2008 23800152, EcoMod.
    11. Bergin, Adele & Conefrey, Thomas & FitzGerald, John & Kearney, Ide & Znuderl, Nusa, 2013. "The HERMES-13 macroeconomic model of the Irish economy," Papers WP460, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    12. Chadwick, Meltem, 2010. "An Empirical Analysis of Fluctuations in Economic Efficiency in European Countries," MPRA Paper 75304, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Javier Andrés & Rafael Doménech & Campbell Leith, 2006. "Fiscal Policy, Macroeconomic Stability And Finite Horizons," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 53(1), pages 72-89, February.
    14. Domenico Giannone & Michele Lenza & Lucrezia Reichlin, 2010. "Business Cycles in the Euro Area," NBER Chapters, in: Europe and the Euro, pages 141-167, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Henk C. Kranendonk & Jan Bonenkamp & Johan P. Verbruggen, 2004. "A Leading Indicator for the Dutch Economy – Methodological and Empirical Revision of the CPB System," CESifo Working Paper Series 1200, CESifo.
    16. Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter & Violante, Giovanni L, 2002. "General Purpose Technology and Wage Inequality," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 315-345, December.
    17. Nicholas Oulton, 2013. "Medium and long run prospects for UK growth in the aftermath of the financial crisis," Discussion Papers 1307, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    18. Michael ARTIS & Massimiliano MARCELLINO & Tommaso PROIETTI, 2002. "Dating the Euro Area Business Cycle," Economics Working Papers ECO2002/24, European University Institute.
    19. John Duffy & Chris Papageorgiou & Fidel Perez-Sebastian, 2004. "Capital-Skill Complementarity? Evidence from a Panel of Countries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 327-344, February.
    20. Martínez, Diego & Rodríguez, Jesús & Torres, José L., 2008. "The productivity paradox and the new economy: The Spanish case," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1569-1586, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbi:qtbart:y:2014:m:01:p:76-89. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Fiona Farrelly (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbigvie.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.