IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/revfin/v20y2016i1p337-371..html

Corporate Investment over the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Dangl
  • Youchang Wu

Abstract

The average capital growth rate across firms declines sharply during a recession, and recovers only slowly. We provide a micro-founded explanation for this and several new stylized facts of investment asymmetry. Our investment model features various degrees of reversibility, cyclical macroeconomic shocks, and uncertainty about the state of the economy. Model simulations replicate strikingly different empirical patterns of capital growth rates at the aggregate and firm levels, featuring no slope asymmetry and a positive level asymmetry at the firm level, negative slope and level asymmetries at the aggregate level, and a positive relation between the industry-level slope asymmetry and asset illiquidity.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Dangl & Youchang Wu, 2016. "Corporate Investment over the Business Cycle," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 20(1), pages 337-371.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:20:y:2016:i:1:p:337-371.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rof/rfv003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474, December.
    2. Manuel Klein, 2009. "Comment on “Investment Timing Under Incomplete Information”," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(1), pages 249-254, February.
    3. Eisfeldt, Andrea L. & Rampini, Adriano A., 2006. "Capital reallocation and liquidity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 369-399, April.
    4. Jean-Paul Décamps & Thomas Mariotti & Stéphane Villeneuve, 2005. "Investment Timing Under Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 472-500, May.
    5. Guo, Xin & Miao, Jianjun & Morellec, Erwan, 2005. "Irreversible investment with regime shifts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 37-59, May.
    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. Bai, John (Jianqiu) & Eldemire, Ashleigh & Serfling, Matthew, 2024. "The effect of labor mobility on corporate investment and performance over the business cycle," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    2. Mario Daniele Amore & Margherita Corina, 2021. "Political elections and corporate investment: International evidence," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 52(9), pages 1775-1796, December.
    3. Hongsheng Fang & Wen‐Quan Hu & Ruhua Shi & Xufei Zhang, 2023. "The Chinese‐style macroeconomic control: The role of state‐owned enterprises," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 702-725, March.

    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. Hugonnier, Julien & Morellec, Erwan, 2007. "Corporate control and real investment in incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1781-1800, May.
    2. Giorgio Ferrari & Hanwu Li & Frank Riedel, 2020. "A Knightian Irreversible Investment Problem," Papers 2003.14359, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    3. Insley, Margaret, 2017. "Resource extraction with a carbon tax and regime switching prices: Exercising your options," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Jean-Paul Décamps & Fabien Gensbittel & Thomas Mariotti, 2025. "Investment Timing and Technological Breakthroughs," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 50(2), pages 1478-1513, May.
    5. Hu, Fan & Wu, Yaoyao & Zhou, Lei, 2022. "Irreversible investment and capacity choice with Bayesian learning," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    6. Aïd, René & Basei, Matteo & Ferrari, Giorgio, 2023. "A Stationary Mean-Field Equilibrium Model of Irreversible Investment in a Two-Regime Economy," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 679, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    7. Felix Dammann & Giorgio Ferrari, 2023. "Optimal execution with multiplicative price impact and incomplete information on the return," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 713-768, July.
    8. Kyung Shim & Harjoat Bhamra, 2015. "Stochastic Idiosyncratic Operating Risk and Real Options: Implications for Stock Returns," 2015 Meeting Papers 1494, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Ren'e Aid & Matteo Basei & Giorgio Ferrari, 2023. "A Stationary Mean-Field Equilibrium Model of Irreversible Investment in a Two-Regime Economy," Papers 2305.00541, arXiv.org.
    10. Erik Ekström & Martin Vannestål, 2019. "American Options And Incomplete Information," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(06), pages 1-14, September.
    11. Basei, Matteo & Ferrari, Giorgio & Rodosthenous, Neofytos, 2023. "Uncertainty over Uncertainty in Environmental Policy Adoption: Bayesian Learning of Unpredictable Socioeconomic Costs," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 677, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    12. Klaus Gugler & Mario Liebensteiner & Adhurim Haxhimusa & Nora Schindler, 2016. "Investment under Uncertainty in Electricity Generation," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp234, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    13. Ferrari, Giorgio & Yang, Shuzhen, 2016. "On an optimal extraction problem with regime switching," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 562, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    14. Hui Chen & Gustavo Manso, 2017. "Macroeconomic Risk and Debt Overhang," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 1-38.
    15. Peng, Juan & Yang, Jinqiang & Zhao, Pengxiang, 2025. "Investment, Tobin’s q, and the stochastic price of fossil fuel," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    16. Vicky Henderson & Kamil Klad'ivko & Michael Monoyios & Christoph Reisinger, 2017. "Executive stock option exercise with full and partial information on a drift change point," Papers 1709.10141, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2020.
    17. Michele Baggio, 2016. "Optimal Fishery Management with Regime Shifts: An Assessment of Harvesting Strategies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 64(3), pages 465-492, July.
    18. Lee, Junghoon, 2016. "The impact of idiosyncratic uncertainty when investment opportunities are endogenous," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 105-124.
    19. Baggio, Michele & Perrings, Charles, 2015. "Modeling adaptation in multi-state resource systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 378-386.
    20. Wei Cui, 2022. "Macroeconomic Effects of Delayed Capital Liquidation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(4), pages 1683-1742.

    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:oup:revfin:v:20:y:2016:i:1:p:337-371.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eufaaea.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.