IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6420.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nonlinear Aggregate Investment Dynamics: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Ricardo J. Caballero
  • Eduardo M.R.A. Engel

Abstract

In this paper we derive a model of aggregate investment that builds from the lumpy microeconomic behavior of firms facing stochastic fixed adjustment costs. Instead of the standard sharp (S,s) bands, firms' adjustment policies take the form of a probability of adjustment (adjustment hazard) that responds smoothly to changes in firms' capacity gap. The model has appealing aggregation properties, and yields nonlinear aggregate time series processes. The passivity of normal times is, occasionally, more than offset by the brisk response to large accumulated shocks. Using within and out-of-sample criteria, we find that the model performs substantially better than the standard linear models of investment for postwar sectoral U.S. manufacturing equipment and structures investment data.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M.R.A. Engel, 1998. "Nonlinear Aggregate Investment Dynamics: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 6420, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6420
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6420.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Laroque, Guy, 1990. "Asset Pricing and Optimal Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Illiquid Durable Consumption Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 25-51, January.
    2. Cooper, Russell & Haltiwanger, John, 1993. "The Aggregate Implications of Machine Replacement: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 360-382, June.
    3. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    4. 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.
    5. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M. R. A. Engel & John C. Haltiwanger, 1995. "Plant-Level Adjustment and Aggregate Investment Dynamics," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(2), pages 1-54.
    6. Eberly, Janice C, 1994. "Adjustment of Consumers' Durables Stocks: Evidence from Automobile Purchases," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 403-436, June.
    7. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M. R. A. Engel, 1993. "Microeconomic Adjustment Hazards and Aggregate Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(2), pages 359-383.
    8. Peter K. Clark, 1993. "Tax Incentives and Equipment Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1), pages 317-347.
    9. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "The Determinants of Investment: Another Look," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(2), pages 71-75, May.
    10. Caballero, Ricardo J & Engel, Eduardo M R A & Haltiwanger, John, 1997. "Aggregate Employment Dynamics: Building from Microeconomic Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 115-137, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Claudio Michelacci, 1999. "Cross-Sectional Heterogeneity and the Persistence of Aggregate Fluctuations," Working Papers wp1999_9906, CEMFI.
    2. Ngongang, Elie, 2011. "Impact of Exchange Rate Policy on the Trade of Industrial Products in Sub-Saharan Africa from 1975 to 2007," Review of Applied Economics, Lincoln University, Department of Financial and Business Systems, vol. 7(1-2), pages 1-27, March.
    3. Simon Gilchrist & Charles Himmelberg, 1999. "Investment: Fundamentals and Finance," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1998, volume 13, pages 223-274, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Gopinath, Gita, 2004. "Lending booms, sharp reversals and real exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-23, January.
    5. Anne Epaulard, 2001. "À la recherche des déterminants de l'investissement des entreprises," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 341(1), pages 3-14.
    6. Lars Jonung, 2005. "Proceedings of the 2004 first annual DG ECFIN research conference on “Business Cycles and Growth in Europeâ€," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 227, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    7. Bayraktar, Nihal & Sakellaris, Plutarchos & Vermeulen, Philip, 2005. "Real versus financial frictions to capital investment," Working Paper Series 2005, European Central Bank.
    8. Bayraktar, Nihal & Sakellaris, Plutarchos & Vermeulen, Philip, 2005. "Real versus financial frictions to capital investment," Working Paper Series 566, European Central Bank.

    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 E. Doms & Timothy Dunne, 1998. "Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(2), pages 409-429, April.
    2. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    3. Carlos Casacuberta & Néstor Gandelman, 2012. "Protection, Openness, and Factor Adjustment: Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector in Uruguay," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 597-629.
    4. Austan Goolsbee & David B. Gross, 1997. "Estimating Adjustment Costs with Data on Heterogeneous Capital Goods," NBER Working Papers 6342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Russell W. Cooper & John C. Haltiwanger, 2006. "On the Nature of Capital Adjustment Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 611-633.
    6. 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).
    7. John Haltiwanger & Russell Cooper & Laura Power, 1999. "Machine Replacement and the Business Cycle: Lumps and Bumps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 921-946, September.
    8. Marcela Eslava & John Haltiwanger & Adriana Kugler & Maurice Kugler, 2010. "Factor Adjustments after Deregulation: Panel Evidence from Colombian Plants," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 378-391, May.
    9. House, Christopher L., 2014. "Fixed costs and long-lived investments," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 86-100.
    10. Bo E. Honor√ & Daniel Kaufmann & Sarah Lein, 2012. "Asymmetries in Price-Setting Behavior: New Microeconometric Evidence from Switzerland," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44, pages 211-236, December.
    11. Scott Schuh & Robert K Triest, 1998. "Job Reallocation And The Business Cycle: New Facts An Old Debate," Working Papers 98-11, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. 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.
    13. Xavier Galiègue, 1999. "Rigidités microéconomiques, flexibilité macroéconomique. L'émergence d'une macro-économie de la spécificité et de l'irréversibilité," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 35(1), pages 19-36.
    14. Richard Disney & Helen Miller & Thomas Pope, 2018. "Firm-level investment spikes and aggregate investment over the Great Recession," IFS Working Papers W18/03, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    15. Christian Bayer, 2004. "A closer look at the gap. A comment on Cooper and Willis' 'mind the gap' paper," Macroeconomics 0408010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M.R.A. Engel, 2004. "A Comment on the Economics of Labor Adjustment: Mind the Gap: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 1238-1244, September.
    17. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    18. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1998. "Measuring Gross Worker and Job Flows," NBER Chapters, in: Labor Statistics Measurement Issues, pages 77-122, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Gebreeyesus, Mulu, 2009. "Inactions and Spikes of Investment in Ethiopian Manufacturing Firms: Empirical Evidence on Irreversibility and Non-convexities," MERIT Working Papers 2009-061, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    20. Jean-Bernard Chatelain, 2002. "Structural modelling of investment and financial constraints: Where do we stand?," Working Paper Research 28, National Bank of Belgium.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing

    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:6420. 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.