Do firms systematically over- or underinvest as a result of agency problems? We develop a contracting model between shareholders and managers in which managers have private benefits or private costs of investment. Managers overinvest when they have private benefits and underinvest when they have...

Many investment projects have the following characteristics: (i) spending decisions and cash outlays occur sequentially over time, (ii) there is a maximum rate at which outlays and construction can proceed -- it takes "time to build," and (iii) the project yields no cash return until it is...

This paper considers a firm that must issue common stock to raise cash to undertake a valuable investment opportunity. Management is assumed to know more about the firm's value than potential investors. Investors interpret the firm's actions rationally. An equilibrium model of the issue-invest...

We use social network data from Facebook to show that institutional investors are more likely to invest in firms from regions to which they have stronger social ties. This effect of social proximity on investment behavior is distinct from the effect of geographic proximity. Social connections...

Neoclassical investment models predict that firms should make frequent, small adjustments to their capital stocks. Microeconomic evidence, however, shows just the opposite -- firms make infrequent, large adjustments to their capital stocks. In response, researchers have developed models with...

This paper is a contribution to the small but growing literature that compares the investment and R&D behavior of manufacturing firms in large developed countries that have varying financial and capital market institutions. Specifically, we look at two similar samples of French and United States...

We develop and analyze a model of a multi-stage investment project that captures many features of R&D ventures and start-up companies. An important feature these problems share is that the firm learns about the potential profitability of the project throughout its life, but that research and...

This paper studies managerial decisions about investment in long-run projects in the presence of imperfect information (the market knows less about such investments than the firm's managers) and short-term managerial objectives (the managers are concerned about the short-term stock price as well...