IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmfpp/ijmf-01-2020-0042.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Product market competition, oil uncertainty and corporate investment

Author

Listed:
  • Hussein Abdoh
  • Aktham Maghyereh

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of product market competition on the oil uncertainty–investment relation. Design/methodology/approach - The authors use firm-level financial data from the COMPUSTAT database, competition proxies from Hoberg and Phillips (2016) and macroeconomic data on crude oil price uncertainty. Corporate investment is measured as capital expenditure scaled by total assets or as the annual change in (net) total fixed assets plus depreciation. Since our panel data covers a short period (22 years) and the regressions include a combination of a lagged dependent variable and firm fixed effects, the authors apply Blundell and Bond’s (1998) GMM system when regressing corporate investment on the interaction between oil uncertainty and competition. Findings - Consistent with the theories in the irreversible investment literature, the authors first show that investments are negatively related to oil uncertainty. Second, they show that firms in competitive industries decrease their investments in response to heightened uncertainty by a higher degree than firms in concentrated industries, suggesting that competition can exacerbate negative investment outcomes when success is uncertain. The authors also examine how competition relates to investment asymmetric reactions to positive and negative oil price return volatilities and find a stronger negative relationships between competition and investment-positive oil price volatility, indicating that increasing the probability of a negative outcome due to uncertainty leads firms to reduce investment to a larger extent. Practical implications - The findings provide useful insights to guide corporate investment decisions under oil price change uncertainty. In particular, if firms can wait for the resolution of uncertainty before deciding to pursue irreversible investment in a competitive market, they can avoid potentially large losses by foregoing investment when the outcomes are unfavorable. This is because competition brings a greater uncertainty to firm performance if the investment outcome is poor, as firms in competitive industries share a large proportion of industry-wide profits with rivals and, thus, competition could erode profit margins and increases the likelihood of being driven out of the market. Hence, firms in competitive markets should balance between strategic preemptive motives and waiting for the resolution of uncertainty before deciding to pursue investment. Originality/value - This study is the first to examine the effect of competition on the relationship between investment and oil price uncertainty. Moreover, it is the first to examine the effect of competition on the asymmetric response of investment to oil price uncertainty emanating from positive and negative changes in oil price.

Suggested Citation

  • Hussein Abdoh & Aktham Maghyereh, 2020. "Product market competition, oil uncertainty and corporate investment," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 16(5), pages 645-671, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmfpp:ijmf-01-2020-0042
    DOI: 10.1108/IJMF-01-2020-0042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJMF-01-2020-0042/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJMF-01-2020-0042/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJMF-01-2020-0042?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Henry Okodua & Ese Urhie & Moses Akpesiri Erhi & Christiana Onyohu Hassan & Eyitemi Ayomikun Fasanu, 2022. "Oil Price Volatility and Equity Valuation of Listed Energy Companies in Nigeria: A Panel ARDL Model," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 12(5), pages 482-490, September.
    2. Yang, Baochen & Song, Xinyu, 2023. "Does oil price uncertainty matter in firm innovation? Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. Popkova, Elena G. & Bogoviz, Aleksei V. & Lobova, Svetlana V. & DeLo, Piper & Alekseev, Alexander N. & Sergi, Bruno S., 2023. "Environmentally sustainable policies in the petroleum sector through the lens of industry 4.0. Russians Lukoil and Gazprom: The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 vs sanctions crisis of 2022," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Product market competition; Crude oil price uncertainty; Corporate investment; Asymmetric effects; D40; Q43; G31; C23; E22;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity

    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:eme:ijmfpp:ijmf-01-2020-0042. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.