IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reveco/v92y2024icp1270-1286.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk-averse corporate investment behavior and the effectiveness of quantitative easing

Author

Listed:
  • Wu, Ying

Abstract

This paper analyzes how risk-averse investment behavior in a liquidity trap can render quantitative easing ineffective under certain circumstances. For risk-averse firms that could lever either a risky investment project or a riskless alternative, I show that the real interest rate responsiveness of a relative net investment return causes both the interest-rate sensitivity of investment and the slope of the aggregate demand (AD) curve to bifurcate. Except for the scenario of sufficiently low investment return and high real interest rates, investment is positively related to real interest rates and the AD curve is downward sloping; under the circumstances, quantitative easing backfires but laissez faire helps stimulate investment instead.

Suggested Citation

  • Wu, Ying, 2024. "Risk-averse corporate investment behavior and the effectiveness of quantitative easing," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1270-1286.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reveco:v:92:y:2024:i:c:p:1270-1286
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2024.02.042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056024001205
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iref.2024.02.042?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2008. "Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2195-2230, October.
    2. Anastasios Evgenidis & Apostolos Fasianos, 2021. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and Wealth Inequalities in Great Britain," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 115-175, February.
    3. Saleheen, Jumana & Levina, Iren & Melolinna, Marko & Tatomir, Srdan, 2017. "The financial system and productive investment: new survey evidence," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 57(1), pages 4-17.
    4. Luigi Guiso & Giuseppe Parigi, 1999. "Investment and Demand Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 185-227.
    5. Fujiwara, Ippei, 2006. "Evaluating monetary policy when nominal interest rates are almost zero," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 434-453, September.
    6. Maria N. Ivanova, 2018. "Quantitative Easing: A Postmortem," International Journal of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3-4), pages 253-280, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Dotsey, Michael & Lantz, Carl & Scholl, Brian, 2003. "The Behavior of the Real Rate of Interest," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(1), pages 91-110, February.
    9. Barry Eichengreen, 2015. "Secular Stagnation: The Long View," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 66-70, May.
    10. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Neil R. Mehrotra & Jacob A. Robbins, 2019. "A Model of Secular Stagnation: Theory and Quantitative Evaluation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 1-48, January.
    11. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Paul Krugman, 2012. "Debt, Deleveraging, and the Liquidity Trap: A Fisher-Minsky-Koo Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1469-1513.
    12. King, Robert G & Watson, Mark W, 1996. "Money, Prices, Interest Rates and the Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 35-53, February.
    13. Robert J. Gordon, 2018. "Why Has Economic Growth Slowed When Innovation Appears to be Accelerating?," NBER Working Papers 24554, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Ryan Niladri Banerjee & Jonathan Kearns & Marco Jacopo Lombardi, 2015. "(Why) Is investment weak?," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    15. Gordon, Robert J., 2018. "Why Has Economic Growth Slowed When Innovation Appears To Be Accelerating?," CEPR Discussion Papers 13039, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Ben S. Bernanke, 2018. "The Real Effects of Disrupted Credit: Evidence from the Global Financial Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 251-342.
    17. Gray, Jo Anna & Wu, Ying, 1995. "On equilibrium credit rationing and interest rates," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 405-420.
    18. Ben S. Bernanke, 2020. "The New Tools of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 943-983, April.
    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. Ciaffi, Giovanna & Deleidi, Matteo & Di Bucchianico, Stefano, 2024. "Stagnation despite ongoing innovation: Is R&D expenditure composition a missing link? An empirical analysis for the US (1948–2019)," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    2. Demetris Koursaros & Nektarios Michail & Niki Papadopoulou & Christos Savva, 2018. "To Create or to Redistribute? That is the Question," Working Papers 2018-5, Central Bank of Cyprus.
    3. Fabio Busetti & Claire Giordano & Giordano Zevi, 2016. "The Drivers of Italy’s Investment Slump During the Double Recession," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 2(2), pages 143-165, July.
    4. Raffaele Fargnoli, 2020. "Adapting the EU Fiscal Governance to New Macroeconomics and Political Realities," RSCAS Working Papers 2020/03, European University Institute.
    5. Ricardo J Caballero & Alp Simsek, 2020. "A Risk-Centric Model of Demand Recessions and Speculation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1493-1566.
    6. Agostino Consolo & Marco Langiulli & David Sondermann, 2019. "Business investment in euro area countries: the role of institutions and debt overhang," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(7), pages 561-575, April.
    7. Pravakar Sahoo & Ashwani Bishnoi, 2021. "Investment Slowdown in India: Role of Fiscal-Monetary policy and Economic Uncertainty," IEG Working Papers 439, Institute of Economic Growth.
    8. Buchholz, Manuel & Tonzer, Lena & Berner, Julian, 2016. "Asymmetric Investment Responses to Firm-Specific Uncertainty," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145563, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Bańbura, Marta & Albani, Maria & Ambrocio, Gene & Bursian, Dirk & Buss, Ginters & de Winter, Jasper & Gavura, Miroslav & Giordano, Claire & Júlio, Paulo & Le Roux, Julien & Lozej, Matija & Malthe-Thag, 2018. "Business investment in EU countries," Occasional Paper Series 215, European Central Bank.
    10. La-Bhus Fah Jirasavetakul & Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo, 2018. "Economic Policy Uncertainty in Turkey," IMF Working Papers 2018/272, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Giordano, Claire & Marinucci, Marco & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2019. "The macro determinants of firms' and households' investment: Evidence from Italy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 118-133.
    12. Berner, Julian & Buchholz, Manuel & Tonzer, Lena, 2020. "Asymmetric investment responses to firm-specific forecast errors," IWH Discussion Papers 5/2020, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    13. Christl, Michael & Köppl-Turyna, Monika & Lorenz, Hanno, 2016. "Investitionen: Warum wir sie brauchen und wie wir sie kriegen [Blessed is he who expects nothing? The role of expectations for investment]," EconStor Preprints 145294, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    14. Gries, Thomas & Naude, Wim, 2018. "Artificial intelligence, jobs, inequality and productivity: Does aggregate demand matter?," MERIT Working Papers 2018-047, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    15. Manuel Buchholz & Lena Tonzer & Julian Berner, 2022. "Firm‐specific forecast errors and asymmetric investment propensity," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(2), pages 764-793, April.
    16. Enrico Perotti & Magdelena Rola-Janicka, 2019. "Funding Shocks and Credit Quality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-060/IV, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Steven Bond‐Smith, 2022. "Discretely innovating: The effect of limited market contestability on innovation and growth," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 69(3), pages 301-327, July.
    18. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2018. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 113-153, April.
    19. 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.
    20. N. Bloom, 2016. "Fluctuations in uncertainty," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 4.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate investment; Risk aversion; Quantitative easing; Laissez faire; Aggregate demand;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:eee:reveco:v:92:y:2024:i:c:p:1270-1286. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620165 .

    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.