IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0502.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Ben S. Bernanke

Abstract

The optimal timing of real investment is studied under the assumptions that investment is irreversible and that new information about returns is arriving over time. Investment should be undertaken in this case only when the costs of deferring the project exceed the expected value of information gained by waiting. Uncertainty, because it increases the value of waiting for new information, retards the current rate of investment. The nature of investor's optimal reactions to events whose implications are resolved over time is a possible explanation of the instability of aggregate investment over the business cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben S. Bernanke, 1980. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment," NBER Working Papers 0502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0502
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0502.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 689-711, July/Aug..
    2. Kenneth J. Arrow & Anthony C. Fisher, 1974. "Environmental Preservation, Uncertainty, and Irreversibility," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 4, pages 76-84, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Lucas, Robert E., 1977. "Understanding business cycles," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 7-29, January.
    4. James Tobin & William C. Brainard, 1976. "Asset Markets and the Cost of Capital," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 427, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    5. Brunner, Karl & Meltzer, Allan H., 1977. "Stabilization of the domestic and international economy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 1-6, January.
    6. Paul A. Samuelson, 1939. "A Synthesis of the Principle of Acceleration and the Multiplier," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47, pages 786-786.
    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. Mark Schankerman, 1991. "Revisions of Investment Plans and the Stock Market Rate of Return," STICERD - Economics of Industry Papers 05, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    2. Elvio Accinelli & Juan Gabriel Brida, 2007. "Modelos económicos con múltiples regímenes," Revista de Administración, Finanzas y Economía (Journal of Management, Finance and Economics), Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de México, vol. 1(2), pages 96-115.
    3. Marco Gallegati & Mauro Gallegati, 2005. "Wavelet variance and correlation analyses of output in G7 countries," Macroeconomics 0512017, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. George S. Tavlas, 2015. "In Old Chicago: Simons, Friedman, and the Development of Monetary‐Policy Rules," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(1), pages 99-121, February.
    5. Cheron, A., 2002. "Labor-market search and real business cycles: Nash bargaining vs. fair wage," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 279-285, October.
    6. Franco Bevilacqua & Adriaan van Zon, 2004. "Random walks and non-linear paths in macroeconomic time series: some evidence and implications," Chapters, in: John Foster & Werner Hölzl (ed.), Applied Evolutionary Economics and Complex Systems, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. C. Emre Alper, 2000. "Stylized Facts of Business Cycles, Excess Volatility and Capital Flows: Evidence from Mexico and Turkey," Working Papers 2000/11, Bogazici University, Department of Economics.
    8. Marcus Scheiblecker, 2007. "Datierung von Konjunkturwendepunkten in Österreich," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 80(9), pages 715-730, September.
    9. Mercè Sala-Rios & Teresa Torres-Solé & Mariona Farré-Perdiguer, 2016. "Credit and business cycles’ relationship: evidence from Spain," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 15(3), pages 149-171, December.
    10. Crowley, Patrick M. & Lee, Jim, 2005. "Decomposing the co-movement of the business cycle : a time-frequency analysis of growth cycles in the euro area," Research Discussion Papers 12/2005, Bank of Finland.
    11. Apostolos Serletis & Todd Kemp, 2007. "The Cyclical Behavior of Monthly NYMEX Energy Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Quantitative And Empirical Analysis Of Energy Markets, chapter 12, pages 149-155, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    12. Punzo, Lionello F., 2003. "Some new tools for the qualitative analysis of dynamic economic data: symbolic and distribution analyses for multi-regime dynamics," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 121-131, June.
    13. Serdar Sayan & Ayça Tekin-Koru, 2010. "Host-Country Economic Policies and Worker Remittances to Developing Countries: The Cases of Turkey and Mexico," Chapters, in: Robert E.B. Lucas & Lyn Squire & T. N. Srinivasan (ed.), Global Exchange and Poverty, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Jim Malley & Robert A Hart & Ulrich Woitek, 2003. "Manufacturing Earnings and Cycles: New Evidence," Working Papers 2002_16, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    15. Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Papageorgiou, Theofanis, 2012. "On the transmission of economic fluctuations from the USA to EU-15 (1960–2011)," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 64(6), pages 427-438.
    16. Carlos Enrique Carrasco Gutierrez & Fábio Augusto Reis Gomes, 2006. "Evidence About Mercosur’S Business Cycle," Anais do XXXIV Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 34th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 179, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    17. Peter Brandner & Klaus Neusser, 1992. "Business cycles in open economies: Stylized facts for Austria and Germany," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 128(1), pages 67-87, March.
    18. Burda Michael C. & Weder Mark, 2002. "Complementarity of Labor Market Institutions, Equilibrium Unemployment and the Propagation of Business Cycles," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, February.
    19. Sergio Rebelo, 2005. "Real Business Cycle Models: Past, Present, and Future," NBER Working Papers 11401, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Ferdinand Fichtner, 2003. "Germany and the European Business Cycle - An Analysis of Causal Relations in an International Real Business Cycle Model," IWP Discussion Paper Series 01/2003, Institute for Economic Policy, Cologne, Germany.

    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:nbr:nberwo:0502. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.