Showing 1 - 10 of 17
I study irreversible investment decisions when projects take time to complete, and are subject to two types of … uncertainty over the cost of completion. The first is technical uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty over the amount of time, effort …, and materials that will ultimately be required to complete the project, and that is only resolved as the investment …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474793
We study capital misallocation within and across 10 African countries using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. First, we compare the extent of misallocation among firms within countries. We document high variation in firms' marginal product of capital (MPK), implying that countries could produce...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012460629
options on incremental units of capital; we show how the values of these options affect the firm's investment decisions …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012472445
The historical pattern of the demographic transition suggests that fertility declines follow mortality declines, followed by a rise in human capital accumulation and economic growth. The HIV/AIDS epidemic threatens to reverse this path. A recent paper by Young (2005), however, suggests that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464399
Using country- and region-level data, I investigate the effect of HIV/AIDS on fertility in Africa during 1985 …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012466487
We re-examine the basic investment problem of deciding when to incur a sunk cost to obtain a stochastically fluctuating … benefit. The optimal investment rule satisfies a trade-off between a larger versus a later net benefit; we show that this … demand curve. We reinterpret the optimal investment rule as a markup formula involving an elasticity that has exactly the …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012472850
Capital investment decisions must recognize the limitations on the firm's ability later to sell off or expand capacity … to the q-theory of investment, and how these options affect the incentive to invest. Generally, the option to expand … effect of uncertainty on investment, how these option values change in response to shifts of the distribution of future …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012473650
A recent literature suggests that because investment expenditures are irreversible and can be delayed, they may be … aggregate investment. We find that the volatility of the marginal profitability of capital - a summary measure of uncertainty … - affects investment as the theory suggests, but the size of the effect is moderate, and is greatest for developing countries …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474573
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 …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474808
We quantify the role of financial factors that have contributed to sluggish investment in Europe in the aftermath of … investment in the aftermath of the crisis can be linked to higher leverage, increased debt service, and having a relationship … with a weak bank--once we condition on aggregate demand shocks. Second, the relation between leverage and investment …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012453161