IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v33y2009i2p345-362.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Limited attention, interaction and the gradual adjustment of a firm's decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Takii, Katsuya

Abstract

A person cannot make many decisions at a time, but an organization needs millions of interrelated decisions. We incorporate this idea into a standard theory of production. Two assumptions are emphasized: an agent cannot optimize more than one input at a time, and there is interaction among inputs. When a firm alternates its attention, the demand for inputs gradually adjusts to the static optimal level. When a firm optimally allocates its attention, this adjustment may not occur. We investigate the conditions under which the adjustment takes place. The results are applied to a standard investment theory. The derived investment-capital ratio is independent of firm size and imperfectly correlated with Tobin's Q.

Suggested Citation

  • Takii, Katsuya, 2009. "Limited attention, interaction and the gradual adjustment of a firm's decisions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 345-362, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:33:y:2009:i:2:p:345-362
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1889(08)00116-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chirinko, Robert S, 1993. "Business Fixed Investment Spending: Modeling Strategies, Empirical Results, and Policy Implications," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1875-1911, December.
    2. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    3. 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.
    4. Reis, Ricardo, 2006. "Inattentive consumers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 1761-1800, November.
    5. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M. R. A. Engel, 1999. "Explaining Investment Dynamics in U.S. Manufacturing: A Generalized (S,s) Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 783-826, July.
    6. Sharon Gifford, 1992. "Innovation, Firm Size and Growth in a Centralized Organization," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(2), pages 284-298, Summer.
    7. John Sutton, 1997. "Gibrat's Legacy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 40-59, March.
    8. Michel Demers, 1991. "Investment under Uncertainty, Irreversibility and the Arrival of Information Over Time," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 333-350.
    9. Bent Jesper Christensen & Rasmus Lentz & Dale T. Mortensen & George R. Neumann & Axel Werwatz, 2005. "On-the-Job Search and the Wage Distribution," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 31-58, January.
    10. Peng, Lin, 2005. "Learning with Information Capacity Constraints," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 307-329, June.
    11. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Gerard A. Pfann, 1996. "Adjustment Costs in Factor Demand," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 1264-1292, September.
    12. 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.
    13. John Haltiwanger & Russell Cooper & Laura Power, 1999. "Machine Replacement and the Business Cycle: Lumps and Bumps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 921-946, September.
    14. Dixit, Avinash, 1997. "Investment and Employment Dynamics in the Short Run and the Long Run," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(1), pages 1-20, January.
    15. Dmitriy Stolyarov & Boyan Jovanovic, 2000. "Optimal Adoption of Complementary Technologies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 15-29, March.
    16. Per Krusell & Lee E. Ohanian & JosÈ-Victor RÌos-Rull & Giovanni L. Violante, 2000. "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1029-1054, September.
    17. Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Inattentive Producers," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 793-821.
    18. Peng, Lin & Xiong, Wei, 2006. "Investor attention, overconfidence and category learning," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 563-602, June.
    19. Andrew S. Caplin & Daniel F. Spulber, 1987. "Menu Costs and the Neutrality of Money," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(4), pages 703-725.
    20. Katsuya Takii, 2005. "Limited Attention, Interaction and the Growth of a Firm," Macroeconomics 0506005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Mark E. Doms & Timothy Dunne, 1998. "Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(2), pages 409-429, April.
    22. Shane A. Corwin & Jay F. Coughenour, 2008. "Limited Attention and the Allocation of Effort in Securities Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 3031-3067, December.
    23. Prescott, Edward C & Visscher, Michael, 1980. "Organization Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(3), pages 446-461, June.
    24. Gifford, Sharon, 1997. "Limited attention and the role of the venture capitalist," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 459-482, November.
    25. Eran Yashiv, 2000. "The Determinants of Equilibrium Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1297-1322, December.
    26. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Pervasive Stickiness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 164-169, May.
    27. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Pervasive Stickiness (Expanded Version)," NBER Working Papers 12024, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. Eberly, Janice C. & Van Mieghem, Jan A., 1997. "Multi-factor Dynamic Investment under Uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 345-387, August.
    29. Gifford Sharon, 2005. "Limited Attention as the Bound on Rationality," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-42, December.
    30. Gifford, Sharon, 1999. "Limited Attention and the Optimal Incompleteness of Contracts," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 468-486, July.
    31. Robert E. Lucas & Jr., 1967. "Adjustment Costs and the Theory of Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 321-321.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Katsuya Takii, 2005. "Limited Attention, Interaction and the Growth of a Firm," Macroeconomics 0506005, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Sakellaris, Plutarchos, 2004. "Patterns of plant adjustment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 425-450, March.
    3. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2003. "Structural modelling of financial constraints on investment: where do we stand?," Chapters, in: Paul Butzen & Catherine Fuss (ed.), Firms’ Investment and Finance Decisions, chapter 2, pages 40-58, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Marcela Eslava & John Haltiwanger & Adriana Kugler & Maurice Kugler, 2010. "Factor Adjustments after Deregulation: Panel Evidence from Colombian Plants," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 378-391, May.
    5. Klepsch, Catharina & Elsas, Ralf, 2016. "How and when do firms adjust their investments toward targets?," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145486, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Fernando E. Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Luigi Paciello, 2011. "Optimal Price Setting With Observation and Menu Costs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1909-1960.
    7. Fabio Verona, 2014. "Investment Dynamics with Information Costs," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(8), pages 1627-1656, December.
    8. Slanicay Martin, 2014. "Some Notes on Historical, Theoretical, and Empirical Background of DSGE Models," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 14(2), pages 1-20, June.
    9. Pratap, Sangeeta, 2003. "Do adjustment costs explain investment-cash flow insensitivity?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 1993-2006, September.
    10. Ryan Michaels, 2013. "The Joint Dynamics of Capital and Employment at the Plant Level," 2013 Meeting Papers 1189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Mark Lasky, 2007. "Output, Investment, and Growth in a World of Putty-Clay: Working Paper 2007-07," Working Papers 18701, Congressional Budget Office.
    12. Klenow, Peter J. & Willis, Jonathan L., 2007. "Sticky information and sticky prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 79-99, September.
    13. Patrick Bolton & Antoine Faure-Grimaud, 2009. "Thinking Ahead: The Decision Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(4), pages 1205-1238.
    14. Julia K. Thomas, 2002. "Is Lumpy Investment Relevant for the Business Cycle?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 508-534, June.
    15. Konstantinos Drakos, 2012. "Extent and intensity of investment with multiple capital goods," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(22), pages 2799-2810, August.
    16. Le, Duc Thuc & Jones, John Bailey, 2005. "Optimal investment with lumpy costs," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1211-1236, July.
    17. Guceri, Irem & Albinowski, Maciej, 2021. "Investment responses to tax policy under uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1147-1170.
    18. Nick Bloom & Stephen Bond & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Uncertainty and Investment Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 391-415.
    19. Orlando Gomes, 2012. "Transitional Dynamics in Sticky-Information General Equilibrium Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 39(4), pages 387-407, April.
    20. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2002. "Structural modelling of investment and financial constraints: Where do we stand?," Working Paper Research 28, National Bank of Belgium.

    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:eee:dyncon:v:33:y:2009:i:2:p:345-362. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    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.