Organizational Capital, Learning-by-Doing and Investment Volatility

This paper addresses the issue of plant-level investment volatility in the context of a purely convex model, where fluctuations are driven by technological shocks. The aim is to assess the role of learning-by-doing in reproducing the well-documented non-smooth investment dynamics at the plant-level, instead of relying on typical non-convexities (fixed costs or indivisibilities) used to account for lumpy investment behavior. The concept of organizational capital is essential in the analysis, and it provides the channel through which learning affects production. Our results indicate that learning-by-doing constitutes a potentially important source of investment volatility at the plant-level, and that one should not believe that convex models of investment necessarily deliver smooth dynamics.