Investment Irreversibility and Finance Constraints.

This paper analyzes the investment behavior of firms in the presence of irreversibility and of a dividend payout constraint. Estimation of investment equations for a panel of U.K. firms shows that the Q model performs well over regions of the sample space where neither constraint is likely to be binding. The constraints are able to account for the empirical significance of cash flow variables for the remaining firms in the sample. Copyright 1997 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd