IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2015-032.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Investment in the Euro Area: Why Has It Been Weak?

Author

Listed:
  • Ms. Bergljot B Barkbu
  • Pelin Berkmen
  • Pavel Lukyantsau
  • Mr. Sergejs Saksonovs
  • Hanni Schoelermann

Abstract

Investment across the euro area remains below its pre-crisis level. Its performance has been weaker than in most previous recessions and financial crises. This paper shows that a part of this weakness can be explained by output dynamics, particularly before the European sovereign debt crisis. The rest is explained by a high cost of capital, financial constraints, corporate leverage, and uncertainty. There is a considerable cross country heterogeneity in terms of both investment dymanics and its determinants. Based on the findings of this paper, investment is expected to pick up as the recovery strengthens and uncertainty declines, but persistent financial fragmentation and high corporate leverage in some countries will likely continue to weigh on investment.

Suggested Citation

  • Ms. Bergljot B Barkbu & Pelin Berkmen & Pavel Lukyantsau & Mr. Sergejs Saksonovs & Hanni Schoelermann, 2015. "Investment in the Euro Area: Why Has It Been Weak?," IMF Working Papers 2015/032, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2015/032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42717
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Bond & Julie Ann Elston & Jacques Mairesse & Benoît Mulkay, 2003. "Financial Factors and Investment in Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom: A Comparison Using Company Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 153-165, February.
    2. Caballero, Ricardo J, 1994. "Small Sample Bias and Adjustment Costs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 52-58, February.
    3. Oliner, Stephen & Rudebusch, Glenn & Sichel, Daniel, 1995. "New and Old Models of Business Investment: A Comparison of Forecasting Performance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(3), pages 806-826, August.
    4. Baum, Christopher F. & Caglayan, Mustafa & Talavera, Oleksandr, 2010. "On the investment sensitivity of debt under uncertainty," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 25-27, January.
    5. J. Maurice Clark, 1917. "Business Acceleration and the Law of Demand: A Technical Factor in Economic Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(3), pages 217-217.
    6. Álvaro Pina & Ildeberta Abreu, 2012. "Portugal: Rebalancing the Economy and Returning to Growth Through Job Creation and Better Capital Allocation," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 994, OECD Publishing.
    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. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.
    2. Balázs Égert, 2018. "Regulation, Institutions and Aggregate Investment: New Evidence from OECD Countries," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 415-449, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Klaus Mohn & Bård Misund, 2011. "Shifting sentiments in firm investment: an application to the oil industry," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(7), pages 469-479.
    5. Simon Price, 2004. "UK investment and the return to equity: Q redux," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 87, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    6. Simon Price & Christoph Schleicher, 2006. "Returns to equity, investment and Q: evidence from the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 310, Bank of England.
    7. Emilio Colombo & Luca Stanca, 2003. "Investment Decisions and the Soft Budget Constraint: Evidence from Hungarian Manufacturing Firms," Working Papers 68, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2003.
    8. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2007. "Investment and the Cost of Capital: New Evidence from the Corporate Bond Market," NBER Working Papers 13174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Mr. Pau Rabanal & Mr. Jaewoo Lee, 2010. "Forecasting U.S. Investment," IMF Working Papers 2010/246, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Emilio Colombo & Luca Stanca, 2006. "Investment decisions and the soft budget constraint," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 14(1), pages 171-198, March.
    11. Renee van Eyden & Goodness C. Aye & Rangan Gupta, 2012. "Predictive Ability of Competing Models for South Africa’s Fixed Business Non- Residential Investment Spending," Working Papers 201229, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    12. Landon, Stuart & Smith, Constance E., 2009. "Investment and the exchange rate: Short run and long run aggregate and sector-level estimates," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 813-835, September.
    13. Crt Lenarcic & Georgios Papadopoulos, 2020. "Determinants of Firm Investment: Evidence from Slovenian Firm-Level Data," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 18(2), pages 159-180.
    14. Jia Liu & Dong Pang, 2009. "Financial factors and company investment decisions in transitional China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 91-108.
    15. Bayer, Christian, 2008. "On the interaction of financial frictions and fixed capital adjustment costs: Evidence from a panel of German firms," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3538-3559, November.
    16. Lynne Cockerell & Steven Pennings, 2007. "Private Business Investment in Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2007-09, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    17. Martinsson, Gustav, 2009. "Finance and R&D Investments - is there a debt overhang effect on R&D investments?," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 174, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    18. Mahraddika, Wishnu, 2019. "Does international reserve accumulation crowd out domestic private investment?," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 39-50.
    19. Colin Ellis & Simon Price, 2004. "UK Business Investment and the User Cost of Capital," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(s1), pages 72-93, September.
    20. Fabio Bacchini & Maria Elena Bontempi & Roberto Golinelli & Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, 2018. "Short- and long-run heterogeneous investment dynamics," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 343-378, March.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2015/032. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.