uncertainty investment and industry evolution we study the effects of aggregate and idiosyncratic uncertainty on the entry of firms total investment and prices in a competitive industry with irreversible investment we first use standard dynamic programming methods to determine firms entry decisions and we describe the resulting industry equilibrium and its characteristics emphasizing the effects of different sources of uncertainty we then show how the conditional distribution of prices can be used as an alternative means of determining and understanding the behavior of firms and the resulting industry equilibrium finally we use four digit u s manufacturing data to examine some implications of the model

cost uncertainty and the rate of investment abstract this paper examines the effect of cost and price uncertainty on the optimal rate of investment by firms within a general equilibrium framework former works which have studied this issue like hartman 1972 and abel 1983 1984 1985 have come to the conclusion that this effect is positive since increased price uncertainty raises expected profitability but these studies assume a fixed discount rate which is equivalent to assuming that consumers are risk neutral this paper shows that if consumers are risk averse the effect of uncertainty may be reversed and investment may be depressed when price or cost uncertainty is increased

a note on competitive investment under uncertainty uncertainty over future output prices or input costs can affect investment by a riskneutral firm in two opposing ways first it can increase the value of the marginal unit of capital which leads to more investment this only requires that the stream of future profits generated by the marginal unit be a convex function of the stochastic variable by jensen s inequality the expected present value of that stream is increased this result was demonstrated by richard hartman 1972 and later extended by andrew abel 1983 and others in their models constant returns to scale and the substitutability of capital with other factors ensure that the marginal profitability of capital is convex in output price and input costs even with fixed proportions however this convexity can result from the ability of the firm to vary output so that the marginal unit of capital need not be utilized at times when the output price is low or input costs are high if investment is irreversible and can be postponed a second effect of uncertainty is to create an opportunity cost of investing now rather than waiting for new information to arrive before committing resources this increases the full cost of investing in a marginal unit of capital which reduces investment 2 hence the net effect of uncertainty on irreversible investment depends on the size of this opportunity cost relative to the increase in the value of the marginal unit of capital the sign of the net effect is significant because of its possible policy implications pindyck 1988 and giuseppe bertola 1989 developed models in which a firm faces a downward sloping demand curve and found the net effect to be negative ricardo caballero 1991 has recently studied investment by an individual firm facing a stochastically shifting demand curve he shows that as returns to scale become constant and the elasticity of demand faced by the firm rises this opportunity cost of investing now rather than waiting approaches zero thus in the limit of constant returns and an infinitely elastic demand curve an increase in uncertainty tends to raise rather than decrease current investment even if that investment is irreversible it is important to stress that caballero s limiting result treats the firm in isolation and describes the effect of a meanpreserving increase in price uncertainty and not an increase in industry wide demand uncertainty this note shows that in a competitive market the key interactions between irreversibility and uncertainty occur at the industry level and can only be understood by making price and industry output endogenous 3 doing so restores the positive opportunity cost associated with irreversible investment in addition caballero s result is based on a model with convex adjustment costs an innovative aspect of the model is that these costs can be asymmetric thereby allowing for partial or complete irreversibility complete irreversibility corresponds to a cost of massachusetts institute of technology cambridge ma 02139 this work was supported by the national science foundation under grant no ses 8618502 and by mit s center for energy policy research my thanks to julio rotemberg and especially ricardo caballero for very helpful comments and discussions 1then the marginal profit of capital at each time t in the future is max o pt ct where ct is variable cost thus a unit of capital represents a set of all options on future production which are worth more the greater the variance of pt or ct 2for a detailed discussion of this point and a survey of the recent literature on irreversibility and its implications for investment and market evolution see pindyck 1991 3studies that make price endogenous include steven lippman and richard rumelt 1985 avinash dixit 1989 1991 and john leahy 1990

investment and uncertainty with time to build evidence from entry into u s copper mining abstract the standard real options model predicts that increased uncertainty discourages investment when projects are large and take time to build however that prediction can be reversed we investigate the investment uncertainty relationship empirically using historical data on opening dates of new u s copper mines large irreversible projects with substantial construction lags both the timing of the decision to go forward and the price thresholds that trigger that decision are assessed in particular we build upon a reduced form analysis to construct a structural model of entry we find that in this market greater uncertainty encourages investment and lowers the price thresholds for many mines

real investment decisions under adjustment costs and asymmetric information abstract we study the cost of adjustment model of investment when there is asymmetry of information between owners the principal and managers the agent information asymmetry distorts the relationship between investment and the cost of capital for all agent types and a regime of inaction appears over a certain cost range in an observationally different way than when fixed adjustment costs or irreversibilities cause a similar phenomenon uncertainty in the form of an increase in the spread of agents types tends to reduce investment despite symmetric adjustment cost and perfect competition the model gives a new interpretation of tobin s q under asymmetric information explaining some results of the mergers and acquisition literature

externalities expectations and pigouvian taxes this article derives pigouvian type corrective measures for reciprocal externalities when non nash behavior characterizes the participants these reciprocal externalities may involve various kinds of environmental pollutants such as acid rain a comparison between corrective measures for nash and non nash behavior demonstrates that positive conjectures regarding the other agent s externality generating activity have an expectation internalizing influence that usually reduces the required corrective measures negative conjectures e g free riding expectations however have an expectation externalizing effect that increases the required corrective measures the article analyzes both two person and n person externalities 13 references 3 figures 1 table

the welfare cost of lawlessness evidence from somali piracy in spite of general agreement that establishing the rule of law is central to properly functioning economies little is known about the cost of law and order breakdowns this paper studies a specific context of this by estimating the effect of somali piracy attacks on shipping costs using data on shipping contracts in the dry bulk market to estimate the effect of piracy we look at shipping routes whose shortest path exposes them to piracy and find that the increase in attacks in 2008 led to around an 8 to 12 increase in costs from this we calculate the welfare loss imposed by piracy we estimate that generating around 120 usd million of revenue for somali pirates led to a welfare loss in excess of 630 usd million making piracy an expensive way of making transfers

the demand for borrowed reserves a switching regression model a microeconomic model of bank demand for borrowed reserves from the federal reserve is developed based upon constrained cost minimization the derived demand function was found to correspond to behavior appropriate to the unknown switchpoint switching regression problem when estimated parameters generally conformed to theoretical expectations the model was also tested for existence of switching regression behavior against a model similar to goldfeld and kane 12 significance exceeded 99 in all cases with the advent of reserve intermediate targeting it appears especially necessary to reinvestigate the behavior determining this important source of reserves with the advent of reserve intermediate targeting as of october 6 1979 it appears especially necessary to reinvestigate the behavior determining one source of these reserves borrowings from the discount window although the behavior of borrowed reserves has concerned researchers since the 1920s interest in the subject generally waned after 1970 the reason has much to do with the studies of polakoff 21 and goldfeld and kane 12 polakoff develops a structural model for discount window borrowing based upon the individual bank minimizing its costs among alternative borrowing sources adapting the seminal work of turner 29 goldfeld and kane extend and estimate polakoff s original model because of their well developed microeconomic theory seemingly accurate empirical adjustments and proxy variables and excellent all around empirical results goldfeld and kane s study is widely hailed as a leading study in the field of borrowed reserve demand evidence exists through studies such as keir 18 that the federal reserve continues to use this same basic model in this study a borrowed reserve demand function is derived using a constrained minimum cost setup included in the cost of discount window borrowing is an implicit cost function reflecting bank reluctance to borrow from the discount window caused by federal reserve surveillance the derived demand function found in section i conforms to behavior appropriate to a switching regression model in this case switching occurs dependent upon the size of the interest rate spread relative to an unknown switchpoint after making minor adjustments in section ii the model is estimated employing monthly data from 1955 78 these results and the tests for the existence of

the theory of public goods non nash behaviour abstract most treatments of equilibrium public goods provision assume zero conjectural variations in the sense that each individual regards the behaviour of the rest of the community as independent of his own this paper introduces nonzero conjectural variations into the model a diagram is introduced which can depict both the individual s and the community s equilibrium in the presence of nonzero conjectural variations equilibrium and optimal outcomes are compared and a specific functional form is used to investigate the effect of community size on the nature of equilibrium finally we discuss the requirement that conjectures should be consistent

the value and applicability of bargaining in an intergenerational setting abstract this paper considers the effectiveness of a variation of coasian bargaining as a policy instrument for internalizing one or multiple intergenerational externalities the variation involves appointing a contemporary party to represent the interests of the affected parties who are currently unable to represent themselves potential criticisms of such a policy are considered and addressed and precedents to such a policy are put forth to test the value of such a policy a two period model in which two externalities exist in the production consumption decisions and with representative agents is used to compare the welfare effects of four scenarios 1 agents in each period optimize their period specific utility 2 a benevolent social planner chooses allocations in both periods to maximize a social welfare function 3 the externalities are internalized using a bargaining policy and 4 the externalities are internalized using a tax and subsidy policy i find that contrary to general consensus in the literature coasian bargaining can be adapted in such a way as to make it applicable in an intergenerational framework

externalities pigouvian corrections and risk attitudes abstract we examine the influence of risk attitudes on the provision of an externality and on the proper size of pigouvian correction when the externality is a random variable whose distribution is affected by an observable externality generating activity an intervening technology relates changes in this observable activity to the probability distribution of the relevant externality unlike the now standard result in the theory of the firm involving the influence of risk attitudes on output levels we cannot conclude that increases in risk aversion will lead necessarily to a reduction in the level of the externality our results are applied to a wide range of market failures

computable markov perfect industry dynamics we provide a general model of dynamic competition in an oligopolistic industry with investment entry andexit toensurethatthereexistsacomputationallytractablemarkov perfectequilibrium we introduce firm heterogeneity in the form of randomly drawn privately known scrap values and setup costs into the model our game of incomplete information always has an equilibrium in cutoff entry exit strategies in contrast the existence of an equilibrium in the ericson and pakes model of industry dynamics requires admissibility of mixed entry exit strategies contrary to the assertion in their article that existing algorithms cannot cope with in addition we provide a condition on the model s primitives that ensures that the equilibrium is in pure investment strategies building on this basic existence result we first show that a symmetric equilibrium exists under appropriate assumptions on the model s primitives second we show that as the distribution of the random scrap values setup costs becomes degenerate equilibria in cutoff entry exit strategies converge to equilibria in mixed entry exit strategies of the game of complete information

commodity trade and the carry trade a tale of two countries persistent interest rate differentials account for much of the currency carry trade profitability commodity currencies offer high interest rates on average while countries that export finished goods tend to have low interest rates we develop a general equilibrium model of international trade and currency pricing where countries have an advantage in producing either basic inputs or final goods in the model domestic production insulates commodity producing countries from global productivity shocks forcing final good producers to absorb them commodity currency exchange rates and risk premia increase with productivity differentials and trade frictions these predictions are strongly supported in the data this article is protected by copyright all rights reserved

investment in new activities and the welfare cost of uncertainty abstract recent literature has shown that trade distortions are associated with first order costs stemming from the induced drop in the formation of new activities we demonstrate that uncertainty may induce similar welfare costs and that these costs apply also to a closed economy this argument is illustrated in romer s model of a dependent economy where foreign direct investment is needed to enable the importation of capital goods and intermediate products used in domestic production we show that knightian uncertainty inhibits the formation of new activities leading to first order losses whereas risk aversion alone leads to second order losses

discount window borrowing and federal reserve operating regimes i introduction the borrowing behavior of banks at the federal reserve s discount window is a component of most models of the monetary sector including the model used by the federal reserve 1 as several researchers have noted 2 however the policy importance of accurate predictions of borrowing behavior depends on the federal reserve s short run operating procedure if the federal reserve uses a federal funds rate target to control money growth as it did in the 1970s inaccurate predictions of borrowing behavior have no effect on money supply growth if the federal reserve uses a nonborrowed reserves target as is usually assumed for the october 1979 to october 1982 period or a borrowed reserves target as was used after october 1982 then poor predictions of bank borrowing are a potentially significant source of errors in controlling money 3 given the importance of accurate borrowing predictions to monetary control under current short run operating procedures admissions by the federal reserve that its borrowing equation poorly explains recent borrowing behavior are cause for concern 4 part of the problem may lie with inadequate allowance for differences in bank borrowing behavior under different operating procedures the choice of operating procedure determines not only the importance of accurate borrowing predictions but also affects borrowing behavior by affecting the stochastic process characterizing the spread between the federal funds rate and the discount rate 5 the standard model for aggregate borrowing typified by goldfeld and kane 1966 assumes a positive relationship between borrowing and the spread the optimizing model of individual bank borrowing decisions of goodfriend 1983 used by cosimano 1988 and dotsey 1989 among others suggests that borrowing also depends negatively on banks expectations about future levels of the spread specifically goodfriend s model of risk neutral banks predicts a larger impact on borrowing of a spread change that banks expect to be temporary than one that banks expect to be more persistent to the extent that banks predict future spreads using an autoregressive model changes in the stochastic process characterizing the spread should change the impact realizations of the spread have on borrowing 6 moreover if banks are risk averse changes in the operating procedures that produce less predictable spreads may affect both banks borrowing and excess reserve behavior 7 because the spread s stochastic behavior depends on the federal reserve s operating procedure borrowing behavior in turn should depend on the federal reserve s operating procedure consequently the federal reserve should not assume that the borrowing equation in its model is invariant to changes in operating procedure as goodfriend notes such an assumption is another example of the lucas critique bryant 1983 and dutkowsky and foote 1988 show that borrowing equations estimated during the period when the federal reserve targeted the federal funds rate produce poor forecasts of borrowing after the regime change of 6 october 1979 these papers do not however provide evidence on how the borrowing equation changed after october 1979 one purpose of this paper is to investigate whether bank borrowing behavior changed with changes in federal reserve operating procedures leading to estimated borrowing equations that differ significantly under different operating procedures in addition to the changes in operating procedures the federal reserve also changed the reserve accounting rules in february 1984 replacing lagged reserve accounting with contemporaneous reserve accounting although the effect of this switch on bank reserve management is difficult to predict the increased uncertainty about reserve needs and the decrease in information about the aggregate demand for reserves make it plausible that banks became more conservative affecting their excess reserve behavior and their discount window borrowing

real options delay vs pre emption do industrial characteristics matter this paper presents an empirical study of the channels of influence from uncertainty to fixed investment suggested by real options theory using panel data from the confederation of british industry cbi industrial trends survey we report ols estimates of the impact of uncertainty on investment where the regressors are augmented by cross sectional averages of the dependent variable and of the individual specific regressors as recently suggested by pesaran pesaran m h 2006 estimation and inference in large heterogeneous panels with a multifactor error structure econometrica 74 967 1012 the cross industry pattern of results is checked for consistency with the pattern predicted by real options theory using a specially constructed data set of industrial characteristics we find that irreversibility is able to predict the pattern detected but only when combined with a measure of the information advantage of delay there is also evidence for expansion options effects industries with high r d and advertising intensities tend to have positive uncertainty effects

industry wide versus firm specific uncertainty and investment british company panel data evidence this paper presents evidence on the prediction that the impacts of firm specific and industry wide uncertainty on investment will be different results show that these work in opposing directions and that the effect of industry specific uncertainty is stronger in concentrated industries

federal deficits macro stabilization goals and federal reserve behavior the effects of federal deficits on federal reserve behavior as proxied by changes in the growth rate of the monetary base are analyzed in this study multivariate granger causality tests are employed in the analysis the deficit measure that is the focus of the analysis is the change in the real market value of privately held federal debt the tests indicate that the deficit granger causes the monetary base additionally concerns for financial market stability real output and exchange rate movements in the period of floating rates also affect federal reserve behavior

the effect of uncertainty on investment timing in a real options model abstract this paper examines the effect of uncertainty on investment timing in a canonical real options model we show that the critical value of a project that triggers the exercise of the investment option exhibits a u shaped pattern against the volatility of the project this is due to the two countervailing risk and return factors in effect we further show that such a u shaped pattern is inherited by the expected time to exercise the investment option thus for relatively safe projects greater uncertainty shortens the expected exercise time and thus enhances investment this is in sharp contrast to the negative investment uncertainty relationship commonly found in the extant literature finally we show that the positive investment uncertainty relationship is more likely for high growth projects than for low growth projects

a framework for dynamic oligopoly in concentrated industries in this article we introduce a new computationally tractable framework for ericson and pakes style dynamic oligopoly models that overcomes the computational complexity involved in computing markov perfect equilibrium mpe first we define a new equilibrium concept that we call moment based markov equilibrium mme in which firms keep track of their own state the detailed state of dominant firms and few moments of the distribution of fringe firms states second we provide guidelines to use mme in applied work and illustrate with an application how it can endogenize the market structure in a dynamic industry model even with hundreds of firms third we develop a series of results that provide support for using mme as an approximation we present numerical experiments showing that mme approximates mpe for important classes of models then we introduce novel unilateral deviation error bounds that can be used to test the accuracy of mme as an approximation in large scale settings overall our new framework opens the door to study new issues in industry dynamics

the effects of advertising on resale price maintenance this research combines the market power and market competition perspectives on advertising under the framework of a generalized theoretical model in minimum resale price maintenance rpm in order to investigate the effects of advertising on rpm using the real options approach the effects of advertising on retail price will impact the value of rpm further influence the incentive of manufacturers to impose rpm through brand penetration and promotional pricing effects advertising is likely to influence rpm under the condition of retail price competition when the brand penetration effect is dominant advertising will discourage manufacturers from imposing rpm advertising will encourage manufacturers to impose rpm when the promotional pricing effect is dominant rpm not only substitutes advertising but also complements advertising

demand fluctuations in the ready mix concrete industry i investigate the role of demand shocks in the ready mix concrete industry using census data on more than 15 000 plants i estimate a model of investment and entry in oligopolistic markets these estimates are used to simulate the effect of eliminating short term local demand changes a policy of smoothing the volatility of demand has a market expansion effect the model predicts a 39 increase in the number of plants in the industry since bigger markets have both more plants and larger plants a demand smoothing fiscal policy would increase the share of large plants by 20 finally the policy of smoothing demand reduces entry and exit by 25 but has no effect on the rate at which firms change their size

a theory of dynamic oligopoly iii cournot competition abstract we study the markov perfect equilibrium mpe of an alternating move infinite horizon duopoly model where the strategic variable is quantity we exhibit a pair of difference differential equations that when they exist differentiable mpe strategies satisfy for quadratic payoff functions we solve these equations in closed form and demonstrate that the mpe corresponding to the solution is the limit of the finite horizon equilibrium as the horizon tends to infinity we conclude with a discussion of adjustment costs and endogenization of the timing

a theory of dynamic oligopoly ii price competition kinked demand curves and edgeworth cycles we provide game theoretic foundations for the classic kinked demand curve equilibrium and edgeworth cycle we analyze a model in which firms take turns choosing prices the model is intended to capture the idea of reactions based on short run commitment in a markov perfect equilibrium mpe a firm s move in any period depends only on the other firm s current price there are multiple mpe s consisting of both kinked demand curve equilibria and edgeworth cycles in any mpe profit is bounded away from the bertrand equilibrium level we show that a kinked demand curve at the monopoly price is the unique symmetric renegotiation proof equilibrium when there is little discounting we then endogenize the timing by allowing firms to move at any time subject to short run commitments we find that firms end up alternating thus vindicating the ad hoc timing assumption of our simpler model we also discuss how the model can be enriched to provide explanations for excess capacity and market sharing keiiwords tacit collusion markov perfect equilibrium kinked demand curve edgeworth cycle excess capacity market sharing endogenous timing

explaining investment dynamics in u s manufacturing a generalized s s approach we are grateful to olivier blanchard whitney newey james stock an editor three anonymousreferees and seminar participants at brown cepr champoussin chicago columbia econometric society meetings caracas and tokyo efcc harvard impa lse nber princeton rochester site toronto u de chile and yale for their comments financial support to caballero from the national science and sloan foundations and to engel from fondecyt grant 195 510 and the mellon foundation grant 9608 is gratefully acknowledged 2since plants entry is excluded from their sample these statistics are likely to represent lowerbounds on the degree of lumpiness in plants investment patterns 3we use the word project to emphasize the fact that the actual implementation of a projectmay cover more than a year observation realistic time to build aspects of investment are not incontradiction with the view that investment episodes are lumpy in nature 4 see chirinko 1994 for a survey of the empirical investment literature

frictions in a competitive regulated market evidence from taxis this paper presents a dynamic equilibrium model of a taxi market the model is estimated using data from new york city yellow cabs two salient features by which most taxi markets deviate from the efficient market ideal are first matching frictions created by the need for both market sides to physically search for trading partners and second regulatory limitations to entry to assess the importance of these features we use the model to simulate the effect of changes in entry alternative matching technologies and different market density we use the geographical features of the matching process to back out unobserved demand through a matching simulation the matching function exhibits increasing returns to scale which is important to understand the impact of changes in this market and has welfare implications for instance although alternative dispatch platforms can be more efficient than street hailing platform competition is harmful because it reduces effective density

the dynamics of market structure abstract in this paper changes in market concentration are modelled in terms of long run steady state levels and the adjustment towards them both the speed of adjustment and the long run levels of concentration are allowed to vary across industries non linear three stage least squares estimates for allowing for the endogeneity of profits and advertising for 184 u s industries 1963 1967 suggest that both the speed of adjustment and the levels of concentration in the long run are largely determined by minimum efficient scale

a dynamic analysis of the market for wide bodied commercial aircraft this paper uses an empirical dynamic oligopoly model of the commercial aircraft industry to analyse industry pricing industry performance and optimal industry policy a novel feature of the model with respect to the previous literature is that entry exit prices and quantities are endogenously determined in markov perfect equilibrium mpe we find that many unusual aspects of the aircraft data such as high concentration and persistent pricing below static marginal cost are explained by this model we also find that the unconstrained mpe is quite efficient from a social perspective providing only 10 less welfare on average than a social planner would obtain finally we provide simulation evidence that an anti trust policy in the form of a concentration restriction would be welfare reducing

pigouvian taxation with administrative costs abstract this paper examines how the optimal pigouvian tax should be adjusted to reflect adminisrative costs several cases are examined depending on whether the administrative costs are fixed per firm taxed or are a function of the amount of tax collected and on whether such costs are borne by the government or by the taxed firm in some cases the presence of administrative costs leads to an optimal tax greater than the external cost while in other cases it leads to a tax less than the external cost

investment in risky r d programs in the face of climate uncertainty we analyze how the socially optimal technology rd and that uncertainty in damages interacts with uncertainty in the returns to rd and r d that reduces the emissions to output ratio and argue that this is a good representation of r d into fossil fuel technologies for r d programs into non carbon technologies optimal investment is higher in riskier programs our empirical model indicates that the optimal investment in a risky program is about 3 1 2 times larger than in a program with certain returns for r d programs aimed at reducing emissions in fossil fuel based technologies our results show that qualitatively investment is higher in less risky programs under most uncertain damage scenarios our empirical model shows however that the risk profile of fossil fuel based r d programs generally has little quantitative impact on optimal investment the exception is that when the probability of a catastrophe inducing full abatement is very high investment is about twice as high in risky programs compared to programs with certain returns

money and credit confused an appraisal of economic doctrine and federal reserve procedure it is a serious error to suppose that if the monetary authorities are to alter the actual quantity of money people must first be persuaded through interest rate movements to alter the quantity of money they wish to hold nevertheless the error in one guise or another pervades the literature on monetary policy as a result of the fed s willingness to prevent or moderate a demand induced movement in the interest rate write lombra and kaufman 16 1156 in this very journal shifts in money demand cause shifts in the same direction in reserve supply and therefore money supply econometrically determined money supply functions are thus not what they

firms investment decisions in response to demand and price uncertainty we investigate the effect of demand and price uncertainty on firms planned and realized investment from a panel of manufacturing firms uncertainty measures are derived from firms own expectations about demand and prices and firm s sales we find that demand uncertainty at the time of planning depresses planned and subsequent realized investment firms do not revise their plans due to demand uncertainty at the time of spending suggesting that reducing demand uncertainty will only have lagged effects on investment we do not find any effect of price uncertainty our results are consistent with the behaviour of monopolistic firms with irreversible capital

on the sign of the investment uncertainty relationship understanding the effects of uncertainty over any decision variable has fascinated economists for a long time risk aversion and incomplete markets are likely to make the investment uncertainty relationship negative e g roger craine 1989 joseph zeira 1989 what happens in the absence of risk aversion and incomplete markets is however ambiguous richard hartman 1972 and andrew b abel 1983 1984 1985 found that in the presence of symmetric convex costs of adjustment mean preserving increases in price uncertainty raise investment of a competitive firm as long as the profit function is convex in prices on the other hand the recent literature on irreversible investment e g robert s pindyck 1988 giuseppe bertola 1988 has shown that increases in uncertainty lower investment all these results have been derived under either risk neutrality or complete markets intuition suggests that the explanation for such a difference lies with the asymmetric nature of adjustment costs in the irreversible investment case as compared with the symmetry of the adjustment cost mechanisms proposed by abel and hartman although this intuition is confirmed in this paper asymmetric adjustment costs are shown not to be sufficient to explain why the results differ in fact a more hidden but at least as important difference between these two literatures is that the former assumes perfect competition and constant returns to scale whereas the latter assumes either imperfect competition or decreasing returns to scale or both 2 the purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of the decreasing marginal return to capital assumption due to either imperfect competition or decreasing returns to scale or both in determining the effects of adjustment cost asymmetries on the sign of the response of investment to changes in uncertainty under risk neutrality for this the paper develops a simple model with a cost of adjustment mechanism general enough to consider both symmetric convexity and irreversibility as special cases one of the most important findings is the lack of robustness of the negative relationship between investment and uncertainty under asymmetric adjustment costs3 to changes in the degree of competition in fact when firms are nearly competitive the conclusion of hartman and of abel holds no matter how asymmetric adjustment costs are studying adjustment cost mechanisms has a central role in understanding the dynamics of investment and its business cycle implications but conclusive results about the sign of the instantaneous relationship between uncertainty and investment should not be department of economics columbia university new york ny 10027 i am grateful to giuseppe bertola prajit dutta glen hubbard anil kashyap richard lyons and the referees for their useful comments 1the financial literature on investment has considered risk aversion through a premium in the discount rate determined by the capm capital asset pricing model intertemporal capm or consumption capm however often this discount rate is left unchanged when studying the response of investment to uncertainty changes e g pindyck 1988 pp 974 5 thereby omitting the effect of changes in uncertainty on investment due to risk aversion and incomplete markets 2in the typical version of the irreversible investment problem there is no cost of upward adjustments thus imperfect competition and or decreasing returns to scale are required to bound the size of the firm 3in this paper asymmetric adjustment cost refers to the case in which it is more expensive to adjust downward than upward certainly the opposite case is a trivial extension of the case studied in this paper

macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries an introduction macroeconomic volatility both a source and a reflection of underdevelopment is a fundamental concern for developing countries their high aggregate instability results from a combination of large external shocks volatile macroeconomic policies microeconomic rigidities and weak institutions volatility entails a direct welfare cost for risk averse individuals as well as an indirect one through its adverse effect on income growth and development this article provides a brief overview of the recent literature on macroeconomic volatility in developing countries highlighting its causes consequences and possible remedies it then introduces the contributions of a recent conference on the subject sponsored by the world bank and pompeu fabra university barcelona

time to build and fluctuations in bulk shipping abstract this paper explores the nature of fluctuations in world bulk shipping by quantifying the impact of time to build and demand uncertainty on investment and prices we examine the impact of both construction lags and their lengthening in periods of high investment activity by constructing a dynamic model of ship entry and exit a rich dataset of secondhand ship sales allows for a new estimation strategy resale prices provide direct information on value functions and allow their nonparametric estimation we find that moving from time varying to constant to no time to build reduces prices while significantly increasing both the level and volatility of investment jel g31 l11 l62 l92

zeros and lumps in investment empirical evidence on irreversibilities and nonconvexities the objective of this paper is to investigate if and how capital adjustment departs from the smooth pattern implied by standard model based on convex adjustment costs using norwegian micro data we start by documenting the intermittent and lumpy nature of investment rates we then present two pieces of econometric evidence on these issues first we estimate a discrete hazard model to determine the probability of having an episode of high investment conditional on the length of the interval from the last high investment episode second we estimate a switching regression model that allows for the response of the investment rate to fundamentals to differ across regimes in both cases we investigate the aggregate implications of our results

optimal capital structure and investment with real options and endogenous debt costs we examine the joint optimization of financial leverage and irreversible capacity investment in a real options framework with risky debt and endogenous interest costs higher capacity ceteris paribus increases operating leverage and default probability but lowers ex post adjustment costs and generates larger tax shields a key insight is that financial leverage and capacity are substitutes in the debt market equilibrium we develop novel predictions about the effects of capital adjustment costs operating costs and uncertainty on optimal financial leverage and capacity that may potentially help explain ambiguous empirical results in the literature regarding the determinants of capital structure and investment received march 17 2016 editorial decision july 8 2017 by editor itay goldstein

the information content of discount rate announcements what is behind the announcement effect abstract a considerable volume of research shows that asset prices respond to changes in the federal reserve s discount rate while several competing hypotheses have been advanced to explain the market s response to discount rate announcements comparatively little effort has been made to differentiate among alternative hypotheses the result is an abundance of evidence establishing that asset prices respond to discount rate announcements but little if any agreement about why markets respond this article attempts to fill a void in the literature by pointing out how competing hypotheses differ and by constructing tests explicitly designed to differentiate among competing explanations the evidence suggests that the market s reaction to discount rate changes is purely an announcement effect i e a reaction to new information contained in the announcement that the direct effect of discount rate changes on market rates is nil that the announcement effect is invariant to the federal reserve s operating procedure and that generally speaking changes in the discount rate do not signal a change in monetary policy the announcement effect appears to vary with both the nature and extent of the information that the announcement of a discount rate change is believed to contain

adjustment costs uncertainty and the theory of investment the case of non renewable natural resources abstract this paper examines the effects of mineral price and extraction cost uncertainty on the investment program of a competitive resource extracting industry that faces convex costs of adjustment the results show that depletion of mineral reserves will slow down if the marginal adjustment cost function is concave or linear whereas the effect will be ambiguous if the function is convex

aggregate uncertainty investment and asymmetric adjustment in the uk manufacturing sector theory suggests that the level of uncertainty facing firms should affect both the rate of adjustment to and the steady state level of investment although there is ambiguity about the sign of the effect a non linear model of investment behaviour incorporating time varying adjustment speeds with threshold effects is estimated for the uk manufacturing sector the most general non linear specification is found to be most congruent with the data uncertainty has a large and significant effect on both levels and rates of adjustment

asset pricing with mean reversion the case of ships we develop a heterogeneous beliefs asset pricing model with microeconomic foundations that reproduces asset prices cash flows and trading activity in a real asset economy in contrast to the majority of financial markets behavioural models and in line with the nature of the shipping industry in this model agents extrapolate fundamentals formal estimation of the model indicates that an economy where a small fraction of agents significantly extrapolates fundamentals can explain the positive relation between earnings vessel prices and trading activity

detection and impact of industrial subsidies the case of world shipbuilding this paper provides a model based empirical strategy to i detect the presence and gauge the magnitude of government subsidies and ii quantify their impact on production reallocation across countries industry prices costs and consumer surplus i construct and estimate an industry model that allows for dynamic agents in both demand and supply and apply my strategy to world shipbuilding a classic target of industrial policy i nd strong evidence consistent with china having intervened and reducing shipyard costs by 15 20 corresponding to 5 billion us dollars between 2006 and 2012 the subsidies led to substantial reallocation of ship production across the world with japan in particular losing signi cant market share they also misaligned costs and production while leading to minor surplus gains for shippers

irreversible investment real options and competition evidence from real estate development abstract we examine the extent to which uncertainty delays investment and the effect of competition on this relationship using a sample of 1214 condominium developments in vancouver canada built from 1979 1998 we find that increases in both idiosyncratic and systematic risk lead developers to delay new real estate investments empirically a one standard deviation increase in the return volatility reduces the probability of investment by 13 percent equivalent to a 9 percent decline in real prices increases in the number of potential competitors located near a project negate the negative relationship between idiosyncratic risk and development these results support models in which competition erodes option values and provide clear evidence for the real options framework over alternatives such as simple risk aversion

the effects of lower reserve requirements on money market volatility in late 1990 the federal reserve eliminated reserve requirements on nonpersonal time deposits and required reserves fell by about 10 billion an almost 20 percent reduction in early 1992 reserve requirements against transaction accounts were lowered from 12 percent to 10 percent releasing an additional 3 5 billion of required reserves 1 these reductions by lowering total reserve balances potentially could increase reserve market volatility impeding the implementation of monetary policy and possibly spilling over into other markets this paper examines the effects of reserve requirements on market volatility and on the central bank s ability to achieve shortrun policy objectives although a number of earlier studies have examined the effects of reserve requirements on the effectiveness of monetary policy our approach differs in two important respects first we focus on the ability to achieve short run objectives second we provide empirical estimates of the likely effects of lower reserve requirements the central bank cannot directly achieve its long run objectives of output and price stability so it uses policy rules to set shortand intermediate run targets for certain economic variables such as interest rates or monetary aggregates consistent with its long term goals 2 the central bank cannot however perfectly control shortor intermediate run targets so it also relies on a set of operational rules operational rules are used to set instruments such as reserve requirements the discount rate and openmarket operations in order to achieve the shorter run targets previous studies such as ira kaminow 1977 jeremy siegel 1981 ernst baltensperger 1982 richard t froyen and kenneth j kopecky 1983 and brian r horrigan 1988 focused exclusively on longer term objectives of monetary policy in contrast we focus on the shortterm goals of monetary policy in addition we provide empirical estimates of the impact that changes in reserve requirements are likely to have on volatility in the money market previous studies were largely theoretical and therefore could only show that the impact of a change in policy depended on various unknown parameters of a particular model

monetary and real shocks productive capacity and exchange rate regimes where producers may diversify internationally international diversification is shown to inuuce a positive correlation between the volatility of productivity shocks and investment in the presence of a phillips curve the expected gnp is lower under a floating exchange rate regime than under a fixed exchange rate regime this result applies both for real and monetary shocks attempts to reduce foreign direct investment by capital controls will tend to reduce welfare without affecting our results regarding the ranking of exchange rate regimes implies that in the presence of market power uncertainty tends to reduce investment in the first part of the paper i demonstrate the international diversi fication of production modifies this result foreign direct investment tends to offset the impact of market power on the concavity of the profit function by weakening the relative price effect associated with output changes and by increasing the flexibility of adjusting the variable input hence international diversification of production is shown to induce a positive correlation between the volatility of productivity shocks and investment the second part of the paper utilizes the framework presented in section i to re examine the welfare ranking of exchange rate regimes in the presence of capital mobility as is well appreciated a one dimensional answer regarding the merits of a fixed exchange rate regime will not do justice to the host of issues relevant for making the choice between exchange rate regimes the second part of the paper focuses on one aspect of the debate the linkages between volatility domestic and foreign direct investment and productive capacity a frequent argument in favour of exchange rate stability relates to the potential cost of exchange rate volatility which may work to increase the cost of international trade and to reduce its volume yet efforts to detect the adverse effects of exchange rate volatility on trade volumes in the last two decades have not delivered clear cut results in fact the experience of international trade among the united states canada europe and japan suggests that there is no natural

investments of uncertain cost abstract this paper examines irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete and are subject to two types of cost uncertainty the first is technical uncertainty i e uncertainty over the physical difficulty of completing a project which is only resolved as the investment proceeds the second is input cost uncertainty i e uncertainty over the prices of construction inputs or over government regulations affecting construction costs which is external to the firm these two types of uncertainty have very different effects on the investment decision a simple investment rule is derived that maximizes firm value and is used to analyze the decision to start or continue building a nuclear power plant during the 1980s

measuring crisis risk using conditional copulas an empirical analysis of the 2008 shipping crisis the shipping crisis starting in 2008 was characterized by sharply decreasing freight rates and sharply increasing financing costs we analyze the dependence structure of these two risk factors employing a conditional copula model as conditioning factors we use the supply and demand of seaborne transportation we find that crisis risk strongly increased already about 1 year before the actual crisis outburst and that the shipping crisis was predominantly driven by an oversupply of transport capacity therefore market participants could have prevented or alleviated the consequences of the crisis by reducing the ordering and financing of new vessels

flexibility premium of emissions permits abstract investments in abatement technology are often characterised by irreversibility and significant implementation lags whereas emissions permits can be traded at any time as such abatement and emissions permit trading systems are hardly perfect substitutes we formally study the flexibility of emissions permits and propose a unified framework to rationalise the impact of both investment divestment lags and irreversibility in relation to the price of emissions permits using option pricing concepts we reformulate the technology adoption problem in terms of the technology s characteristics irreversibility and implementation lags and offer a conceptual quantification of the flexibility premium of emissions permits

long and short term interest rates in a risky world abstract the paper develops and tests a general equilibrium model in which variability or risk affects the choice of portfolios our measures of variability include only the variability of unanticipated growth in monetary and non monetary aggregates and our tests use data ending with the change in federal reserve procedures in october 1979 we find that increased variability of unanticipated money growth raises demands for debt and money and reduces the demand for real capital interest rates on both short and long term debt rise by a risk premium we estimate the size of the risk premium before and after the october 1979 change and we show that the change in federal reserve procedures moved the economy to a less efficient point

time to build option value and investment decisions abstract investment decisions and outlays are often made sequentially for example the rate at which construction proceeds is usually flexible and can be adjusted with the arrival of new information traditional discounted cash flow methods which treat the pattern of investment as fixed ignore this flexibility and understate the value of the project this paper uses contingent claims analysis to derive optimal decision rules and to value such investments we determine the effects of time to build opportunity cost and uncertainty on the investment decision for reasonable parameter values we show how a simple npv rule can lead to gross errors

evaluating replacement project of nuclear power plants under uncertainty this paper investigates the valuation of a replacement project of nuclear power plants under the deregulated electricity market the replacement project consists of two components the decision to decommission an existing plant and the decision to construct a new plant in the replacement project the decommissioning decision should be made considering not only the profitability of the existing plant but also the profitability and costs of the construction of the new plant real options theory is used to determine the optimal timing of the decommissioning and construction in order to examine the effect of decommissioning time and decision making one we consider a time lag for these decision making times we show the dependence of the replacement project value on uncertainty and time lag

keeping it fresh strategic product redesigns and welfare abstract product redesigns happen across virtually all types of products yet there is little evidence on the market and welfare effects of redesigns we develop a model of redesign decisions in a dynamic oligopoly model and use it to analyze redesign activity in the u s automobile market we find automobile model redesigns are frequent despite an estimated average cost around 1 billion our estimates also suggest that redesigns lead to large increases in profits and welfare due to the strong preferences consumers have for redesigns we show that welfare would be improved if redesign competition were reduced allowing redesign activity to be more responsive to the planned obsolescence channel the net effect of these changes would reduce total redesigns by roughly 10 increasing total welfare by roughly 3 the high valuation that consumers put on newly designed models drives frequent redesigns and gives automobile manufacturers fairly substantial market power with a 2 to 1 ratio of firm profits to consumer surplus

product innovation and the decision to invest in fixed capital assets evidence from an sme survey in six european union member states abstract this work explores the relationship between product innovation and the decision to invest in fixed capital assets among a sample of smes in six european union countries located in both peripheral and more central areas we find that the presence of product innovation reduces the probability to invest a firm s size exerts a direct inverted u shape effect on the probability to invest and an indirect effect through the linear effect of size on the probability to innovate the gap in the probability to invest between innovative and non innovative firms increases with size

an econometric model of the world market for dry cargo freight and shipping 1989 an econometric model of the world market for dry cargo freight and shipping applied economics vol 21 no 3 pp 339 356

term structure views of monetary policy under alternative models of agent expectations abstract term structure models and many descriptions of the transmission of monetary policy rest on the empirical relevance of the expectations hypothesis small differences in the perceived policy reaction function in var models of agent expectations strongly influence the relevance in the transmission mechanism of the expected short rate component of bond yields mean reverting or difference stationary characterizations of interest rates require large and volatile term premiums to match the observable term structure however short rate descriptions that capture shifting perceptions of long horizon inflation evident in survey data support a more substantial term structure role for short rate expectations

capacity dynamics and endogenous asymmetries in firm size empirical evidence suggests that there are substantial and persistent differences in the sizes of firms in most industries we propose a dynamic model of capacity accumulation that is consistent with the observed facts the model highlights the mode of product market competition and the extent of investment reversibility as key determinants of the size distribution of firms in an industry in particular if firms compete in prices and the rate of depreciation is large then the industry moves toward an outcome with one dominant firm and one small firm industry dynamics in this case resemble a preemption race contrary to the usual intuition this preemption race becomes more brutal as investment becomes more reversible

time varying impact of uncertainty shocks on the us housing market abstract this paper investigates the impact of uncertainty shocks on the housing market of the united states using the time varying parameter factor augmented vector autoregression tvp favar we use a comprehensive quarterly time series dataset on real economic activity price and financial variables besides housing market variables covering the period 1963 q1 to 2014 q3 in addition to housing prices we also consider variables related to home sales permits and starts in general the results of the cumulative response of housing variables to a one standard deviation positive uncertainty shock at the one four eight and twelve quarter horizon tends to change over time both in terms of sign and magnitude with the uncertainty shock primarily negatively affecting the housing variables in particular prices permits and starts in longer runs i e two and three years ahead horizons