IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cre/uqamwp/9909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real Investment Decisions Under Adjustment Costs and Asymmetric Information

Author

Listed:
  • Gérard Gaudet

    (Economics Department, Université de Montréal)

  • Pierre Lasserre

    (Economics Department, UQAM)

  • Ngo Van Long

    (Economics Department, McGill University)

Abstract

We study the cost-of-adjustment model of investment when there is asymmetry of information between owners (the principal) and managers (the agent). Information asymmetry distorts the relationship between investment and the cost of capital for all agent types, and a regime of inaction appears over a certain cost range, in an observationnally different way than when fixed adjustment costs, or irreversibilities, cause a similar phenomenon. Uncertainty, in the form of an increase in the spread of agents' types, tends to reduce investment despite symmetric adjustment cost and perfect competition. The model gives a new interpretation of Tobin's q under asymmetric information, explaining some results of the mergers and acquisition literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Gérard Gaudet & Pierre Lasserre & Ngo Van Long, 1999. "Real Investment Decisions Under Adjustment Costs and Asymmetric Information," Cahiers de recherche du Département des sciences économiques, UQAM 9908, Université du Québec à Montréal, Département des sciences économiques.
    • Handle: RePEc:cre:uqamwp:9909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unites.uqam.ca/eco/cahiers/wp9909.pdf
    File Function: Main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    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. 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.
    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. Abel, Andrew B & Eberly, Janice C, 1994. "A Unified Model of Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1369-1384, December.
    5. Caballero, Ricardo J, 1991. "On the Sign of the Investment-Uncertainty Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 279-288, March.
    6. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    7. Abel, Andrew B & Blanchard, Olivier J, 1986. "The Present Value of Profits and Cyclical Movements in Investment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 249-273, March.
    8. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average q: A Neoclassical Interpretation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 213-224, January.
    9. Lewis, Tracy R & Sappington, David E M, 1989. "Inflexible Rules in Incentive Problems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 69-84, March.
    10. Lang, Larry H P & Stulz, Rene M, 1994. "Tobin's q, Corporate Diversification, and Firm Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(6), pages 1248-1280, December.
    11. Diamond, Douglas W, 1989. "Reputation Acquisition in Debt Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 828-862, August.
    12. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    13. Harris, Milton & Raviv, Artur, 1991. "The Theory of Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 297-355, March.
    14. Demers, Fanny S. & Demers, Michel & Schaller, Huntley, 1994. "Irreversible investment and costs of adjustment," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Couverture Orange) 9416, CEPREMAP.
    15. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "The Dynamics of Incentive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1153-1175, September.
    16. Abel, Andrew B, 1983. "Optimal Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 228-233, March.
    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. Shibata, Takashi, 2009. "Investment timing, asymmetric information, and audit structure: A real options framework," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 903-921, April.
    2. Yishay Yafeh & Kenichi Ueda & Stijn Claessens, 2010. "Investment and Institutions," 2010 Meeting Papers 513, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Benchekroun, Hassan & van Long, Ngo, 1998. "Efficiency inducing taxation for polluting oligopolists," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 325-342, November.
    4. Yishay Yafeh & Mr. Kenichi Ueda & Mr. Stijn Claessens, 2010. "Financial Frictions, Investment, and Institutions," IMF Working Papers 2010/231, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Wang Lina & Milis Koen & Poelmans Stephan, 2021. "Study on Pollution Cost Control Model under Asymmetric Information Based on Principal Agent," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 9(5), pages 549-557, October.
    6. Wang Lina & Poelmans Stephen & Milis Koen, 2020. "SCM Implementation Decisions Under Asymmetric Information: An Agency Approach," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 8(5), pages 447-457, October.
    7. Ngo Long & Gerhard Sorger, 2010. "A dynamic principal-agent problem as a feedback Stackelberg differential game," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 18(4), pages 491-509, December.
    8. Ngo Long, 2011. "Dynamic Games in the Economics of Natural Resources: A Survey," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 115-148, March.
    9. Shibata, Takashi & Nishihara, Michi, 2010. "Dynamic investment and capital structure under manager-shareholder conflict," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 158-178, February.
    10. Claessens, Stijn & Ueda, Kenichi & Yafeh, Yishay, 2014. "Institutions and financial frictions: Estimating with structural restrictions on firm value and investment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 107-122.
    11. Jou, Jyh-Bang, 2004. "Environment, irreversibility and optimal effluent standards," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(01), pages 1-32.
    12. Jyh‐Bang Jou, 2004. "Environment, irreversibility and optimal effluent standards," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 48(1), pages 127-158, March.
    13. Hamid Beladi & May Hu & Tan (Charlene) Lee, 2022. "International joint ventures, technology licensing and ownership structure," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 18(4), pages 423-439, December.
    14. Lee, Tan, 2004. "Determinants of the foreign equity share of international joint ventures," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(11), pages 2261-2275, October.
    15. Jyh-Bang Jou, 2001. "Environment, Asset Characteristics, and Optimal Effluent Fees," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 20(1), pages 27-39, September.

    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. Gérard Gaudet & Pierre Lasserre & Ngo Van Long, 1995. "Real Investment Decisions Under Information Constraints," CIRANO Working Papers 95s-33, CIRANO.
    2. Lin, Xiaoji & Wang, Chong & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2018. "Investment, Tobin’s q, and interest rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(3), pages 620-640.
    3. Driver, Ciaran & Temple, Paul & Urga, Giovanni, 2008. "Real options -- delay vs. pre-emption: Do industrial characteristics matter?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 532-545, March.
    4. Sung Je Byun & Soojin Jo, 2018. "Heterogeneity in the dynamic effects of uncertainty on investment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(1), pages 127-155, February.
    5. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    6. Magda Bianco & Maria Bontempi & Roberto Golinelli & Giuseppe Parigi, 2013. "Family firms’ investments, uncertainty and opacity," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 1035-1058, May.
    7. Sarantis Kalyvitis, 2006. "Another look at the linear q model: an empirical analysis of aggregate business capital spending with maintenance expenditures," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(4), pages 1282-1315, November.
    8. Hjalmar Böhm & Michael Funke & Nikolaus A. Siegfried, 1999. "Discovering the Link between Uncertainty and Investment - Microeconometric Evidence from Germany," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 19906, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    9. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2002. "Structural modelling of investment and financial constraints: Where do we stand?," Working Paper Research 28, National Bank of Belgium.
    10. Henriques, Irene & Sadorsky, Perry, 2011. "The effect of oil price volatility on strategic investment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 79-87, January.
    11. Lewe, Stefan, 2003. "Wachstumseffiziente Unternehmensbesteuerung," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 20042, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    12. Jinji, Naoto & Zhang, Xingyuan & Haruna, Shoji, 2019. "Does a firm with higher Tobin’s q prefer foreign direct investment to foreign outsourcing?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    13. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    14. Simon Price, 2004. "UK investment and the return to equity: Q redux," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 87, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    15. Simon Price & Christoph Schleicher, 2006. "Returns to equity, investment and Q: evidence from the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 310, Bank of England.
    16. 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.
    17. Cummins, Jason G. & Hassett, Kevin A. & Hubbard, R. Glenn, 1996. "Tax reforms and investment: A cross-country comparison," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 237-273, October.
    18. Bolton, Patrick & Li, Ye & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2020. "Dynamic Banking and the Value of Deposits," Working Paper Series 2020-13, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    19. Andrew B. Abel, 2015. "The Analytics of Investment, q, and Cash Flow," NBER Working Papers 21549, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Gallegati, Marco & Ramsey, James B., 2013. "Structural change and phase variation: A re-examination of the q-model using wavelet exploratory analysis," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 60-73.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Investment; information asymmetry; adjustment cost; mergers and acquisition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cre:uqamwp:9909. 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: Stéphane Pallage (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/duqamca.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.