IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0449.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pursuing the Wrong Options? Adjustment Costs and the Relationship between Uncertainty and Capital Accumulation

Author

Listed:
  • Bond, Stephen R.

    (Nuffield College, Department of Economics and Centre for Business Taxation, University of Oxford, UK and Institute for Fiscal Studies)

  • Söderbom, Måns

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Wu, Guiying

    (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Abstract

bel and Eberly (1999) show that the effect of uncertainty on long run capital accumulation is ambiguous in a real options model with irreversible investment. We show that a higher level of uncertainty tends to reduce expected capital stock levels in a model with strictly convex adjustment costs. Simulations suggest that this negative impact of uncertainty on capital accumulation may be substantial. We also provide some intuition for this result.

Suggested Citation

  • Bond, Stephen R. & Söderbom, Måns & Wu, Guiying, 2010. "Pursuing the Wrong Options? Adjustment Costs and the Relationship between Uncertainty and Capital Accumulation," Working Papers in Economics 449, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/22358
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew B. Abel, 2002. "On the Invariance of the Rate of Return to Convex Adjustment Costs," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(3), pages 586-601, July.
    2. Andrew B. Abel & Janice C. Eberly, 1996. "Optimal Investment with Costly Reversibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(4), pages 581-593.
    3. Abel, Andrew B. & Eberly, Janice C., 1999. "The effects of irreversibility and uncertainty on capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 339-377, December.
    4. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    5. Janice Eberly & Sergio Rebelo & Nicolas Vincent, 2008. "Investment and Value: A Neoclassical Benchmark," Cahiers de recherche 08-03, HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée.
    6. Hayashi, Fumio & Inoue, Tohru, 1991. "The Relation between Firm Growth and Q with Multiple Capital Goods: Theory and Evidence from Panel Data on Japanese Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 731-753, May.
    7. Russell W. Cooper & John C. Haltiwanger, 2006. "On the Nature of Capital Adjustment Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 611-633.
    8. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    9. Lawrence H. Summers, 1981. "Taxation and Corporate Investment: A q-Theory Approach," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 12(1), pages 67-140.
    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. Guiying Laura Wu, 2015. "Investment Frictions and the Aggregate Output Loss in China," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 77(3), pages 437-465, June.
    2. Amaresh K Tiwari, 2023. "Automation In An Open, Catching-Up Economy: Aggregate And Microeconometric Evidence," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 144, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    3. Irem Guceri & Maciej Albinowski, 2019. "Investment Responses to Tax Policy under Uncertainty," MF Working Papers 34, Ministry of Finance in Poland.
    4. Guceri, Irem & Albinowski, Maciej, 2021. "Investment responses to tax policy under uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 1147-1170.

    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. Andrés Blanco & Isaac Baley, 2022. "The Macroeconomics of Irreversibility," Working Papers 1312, Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Chirinko, Robert S. & Schaller, Huntley, 2009. "The irreversibility premium," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 390-408, April.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.
    6. Pengfei Wang & Yi Wen, 2012. "Hayashi Meets Kiyotaki and Moore: A Theory of Capital Adjustment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 207-225, April.
    7. Nick Bloom, 2007. "Uncertainty and the Dynamics of R&D," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 250-255, May.
    8. Hanno Dihle, 2015. "Real Options in a Ramsey style Growth Model," Discussion Paper Series 32, Department of International Economic Policy, University of Freiburg, revised Dec 2015.
    9. House, Christopher L., 2014. "Fixed costs and long-lived investments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 86-100.
    10. Neha Deopa & Daniele Rinaldo, 2019. "Firm Decisions under Jump-Diffusive Dynamics," IHEID Working Papers 04-2019, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised 21 Mar 2019.
    11. Iván Alfaro & Nicholas Bloom & Xiaoji Lin, 2024. "The Finance Uncertainty Multiplier," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(2), pages 577-615.
    12. Del Boca, Alessandra & Galeotti, Marzio & Rota, Paola, 2008. "Non-convexities in the adjustment of different capital inputs: A firm-level investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 315-337, February.
    13. Missaka Warusawitharana, 2011. "The expected real return to equity," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-14, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Aubhik Khan & Julia K. Thomas, 2013. "Credit Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations in an Economy with Production Heterogeneity," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(6), pages 1055-1107.
    15. Min Fang, 2021. "Lumpy Investment, Fluctuations in Volatility and Monetary Policy," Working Papers 002001, University of Florida, Department of Economics.
    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. Glover, Brent & Levine, Oliver, 2015. "Uncertainty, investment, and managerial incentives," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 121-137.
    18. Maurice Bun & Jasper de Winter, 2019. "Measuring trends and persistence in capital and labor misallocation," DNB Working Papers 639, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    19. 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.
    20. Chen, Cheng & Senga, Tatsuro & Sun, Chang & Zhang, Hongyong, 2023. "Uncertainty, imperfect information, and expectation formation over the firm’s life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 60-77.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods: General
    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity

    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:hhs:gunwpe:0449. 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: Jessica Oscarsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.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.