IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedhle/00106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Has Business Fixed Investment Really Been Unusually Low?

Author

Abstract

Business fixed investment represents the spending by businesses to increase production capacity. It is traditionally decomposed into equipment (such as computers and machines), structures (such as plants, shopping malls, or warehouses), and intellectual property (such as software and R&D). After declining sharply during the Great Recession, business fixed investment (BFI) recovered in 2010, but investment was again quite low in 2015 and 2016. This slowdown was driven in part by the decline of oil prices that led to a significant contraction in the oil drilling industry. Since then, growth has resumed. Figure 1 depicts this recent history.

Suggested Citation

  • François Gourio, 2019. "Has Business Fixed Investment Really Been Unusually Low?," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhle:00106
    DOI: 10.21033/cfl-2019-418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2019/cfl418-pdf.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.21033/cfl-2019-418?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lewis Alexander & Janice Eberly, 2018. "Investment Hollowing Out," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 66(1), pages 5-30, March.
    2. Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2006. "The Dynamic Effects of Neutral and Investment-Specific Technology Shocks," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(3), pages 413-451, June.
    3. Emmanuel Farhi & Francois Gourio, 2018. "Accounting for Macro-Finance Trends: Market Power, Intangibles, and Risk Premia," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 147-250.
    4. Robert E. Hall, 2015. "Quantifying the Lasting Harm to the US Economy from the Financial Crisis," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 71-128.
    5. Julian Kozlowski & Laura Veldkamp & Venky Venkateswaran, 2020. "The Tail That Wags the Economy: Beliefs and Persistent Stagnation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 2839-2879.
    6. Greenwood, Jeremy & Hercowitz, Zvi & Krusell, Per, 1997. "Long-Run Implications of Investment-Specific Technological Change," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 342-362, June.
    7. Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2017. "Investmentless Growth: An Empirical Investigation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(2 (Fall)), pages 89-190.
    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. Nicolas Crouzet & Janice C. Eberly, 2019. "Understanding Weak Capital Investment: the Role of Market Concentration and Intangibles," NBER Working Papers 25869, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Sveen, Tommy, 2014. "Capital accumulation, sectoral heterogeneity and the Taylor principle," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 20-28.
    3. Pablo Burriel & Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Juan Rubio-Ramírez, 2010. "MEDEA: a DSGE model for the Spanish economy," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 175-243, March.
    4. Elstner, Steffen & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M., 2018. "The German productivity paradox: Facts and explanations," Ruhr Economic Papers 767, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    5. Michael T. Kiley & Jean-Philippe Laforte & Rochelle M. Edge, 2008. "The Sources of Fluctuations in Residential Investment: A View from a Policy-Oriented DSGE Model of the U.S. Economic," 2008 Meeting Papers 990, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Luis Díez Catalán, 2018. "The labor share in the service economy," Working Papers 18/09, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    7. Bustamante, Maria Cecilia & Cujean, Julien & Frésard, Laurent, 2019. "Knowledge Cycles and Corporate Investment," CEPR Discussion Papers 14152, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Straub, Ludwig & Ulbricht, Robert, 2015. "Endogenous Uncertainty and Credit Crunches," TSE Working Papers 15-604, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2017.
    9. Wei Cui & Sören Radde, 2020. "Search-based Endogenous Asset Liquidity and the Macroeconomy [Why Don’t US Issuers Demand European Fees for IPOs?]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2221-2269.
    10. Zheng Liu & Daniel F. Waggoner & Tao Zha, 2009. "Sources of the Great Moderation: shocks, frictions, or monetary policy?," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2009-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    11. Ricardo Reis & Vasco Curdia, 2009. "Correlated Disturbances and U.S. Business Cycles," 2009 Meeting Papers 129, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Marquis, Milton H. & Trehan, Bharat, 2008. "On using relative prices to measure capital-specific technological progress," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1390-1406, December.
    13. Andrei Polbin & Sergey Drobyshevsky, 2014. "Developing a Dynamic Stochastic Model of General Equilibrium for the Russian Economy," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 166P, pages 156-156.
    14. L. Ngai & Roberto Samaniego, 2009. "Mapping prices into productivity in multisector growth models," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 183-204, September.
    15. Christoph Gortz & John D. Tsoukalas, 2013. "Learning, Capital Embodied Technology and Aggregate Fluctuations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(4), pages 708-723, October.
    16. Manuel García‐Santana & Josep Pijoan‐Mas & Lucciano Villacorta, 2021. "Investment Demand and Structural Change," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(6), pages 2751-2785, November.
    17. Sumru Altug & Cem Cakmakli & Fabrice Collard & Sujoy Mukerji & Han Ozsoylev, 2020. "Ambiguous Business Cycles: A Quantitative Assessment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 38, pages 220-237, October.
    18. Coeurdacier, Nicolas & Kollmann, Robert & Martin, Philippe, 2010. "International portfolios, capital accumulation and foreign assets dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 100-112, January.
    19. Gregory Casey & Ryo Horii, 2019. "A Multi-factor Uzawa Growth Theorem and Endogenous Capital-Augmenting Technological Change," ISER Discussion Paper 1051, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    20. Alejandro Justiniano & Claudio Michelacci, 2011. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies in the US and Europe," NBER Working Papers 17429, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business; investments;

    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:fip:fedhle:00106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

    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: Lauren Wiese (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbchus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.