IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2925.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Stock Market and Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Barro

Abstract

Changes in real stock-market prices have a lot of explanatory value of the growth rate of U.S. aggregate business investment, especially for long samples that begin in 1891 or 1921. Moreover, for the period since 1921 where data on a q-type variable are available, the stock market dramatically outperforms q. The change in real stock prices also retains its predictive value in the presence of a cash-flow variable, such as after-tax corporate profits. Basically similar results apply to Canadian investment, except that the U.S. stock market turns out to have move predictive power than the Canadian market. I discuss some possible explanations for this puzzling finding, but none of the explanations seem all that convincing.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Barro, 1989. "The Stock Market and Investment," NBER Working Papers 2925, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2925
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2925.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tobin, James, 1969. "A General Equilibrium Approach to Monetary Theory," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 1(1), pages 15-29, February.
    2. Fama, Eugene F, 1981. "Stock Returns, Real Activity, Inflation, and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 545-565, September.
    3. 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.
    4. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "Tobin's Marginal q and Average q: A Neoclassical Interpretation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 213-224, January.
    5. George M. Von Furstenberg, 1977. "Corporate Investment: Does Market Valuation Matter in the Aggregate?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 8(2), pages 347-408.
    6. 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)

    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. Fischer, Stanley & Merton, Robert C., 1984. "Macroeconomics and finance: The role of the stock market," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 57-108, January.
    2. Matthew D. Shapiro, 1986. "The Dynamic Demand for Capital and Labor," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 101(3), pages 513-542.
    3. Samuel, Cherian, 1996. "Stock market and investment : the signaling role of the market," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1612, The World Bank.
    4. 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.
    5. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1998. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 193-225, March.
    6. Jin (Ginger) Wu & Lu Zhang & X. Frank Zhang, 2010. "The q‐Theory Approach to Understanding the Accrual Anomaly," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 177-223, March.
    7. Hansen, Sten, 1999. "Agency Costs, Credit Constraints and Corporate Investment," Working Paper Series 79, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    8. Diego Comin & Ana Maria Santacreu & Mark Gertler & Phuong Ngo, 2018. "Stock Price Fluctuations and Productivity Growth," 2018 Meeting Papers 1147, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Timothy Erickson & Toni M. Whited, 2006. "On the Accuracy of Different Measures of Q," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 35(3), Autumn.
    10. 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.
    11. Laeven, Luc, 2000. "Does financial liberalization relax financing constraints on firms ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2467, The World Bank.
    12. Tryphon Kollintzas, 1986. "Tax Policy under Nongeometric Physical Depreciation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 14(3), pages 263-288, July.
    13. Atanda Mustapha Saidi, 2017. "Working Paper 273 - Stock (Mis)pricing and investment dynamics in Africa," Working Paper Series 2390, African Development Bank.
    14. Lizal, L., 1999. "Does a Soft Macroeconomic Environment Induce Restructuring on the Microeconomic Level during the Transition Period? Evidence from Investment Behavior of Czech Enterprises," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp147, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    15. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1990. "Introduction to "Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment"," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 1-14, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Jacques Mairesse & Bronwyn H. Hall & Benoît Mulkay, 1999. "Firm-Level Investment in France and the United States: An Exploration of What We Have Learned in Twenty Years," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 55-56, pages 27-67.
    17. DUFOUR, Jean-Marie & JASIAK, Joanna, 1998. "Finite-Sample Inference Methods for Simultaneous Equations and Models with Unobserved and Generated Regressors," Cahiers de recherche 9812, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    18. Hans Joachim Voth, 2000. "With a bang, not a whimper: Pricking Germany's "stock market bubble" in 1927 and the slide into depression," Economics Working Papers 516, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. Barnett, Steven A. & Sakellaris, Plutarchos, 1998. "Nonlinear response of firm investment to Q:: Testing a model of convex and non-convex adjustment costs1," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 261-288, July.
    20. 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).

    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:2925. 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/nberrus.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: (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 hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.