Our analysis melds two traditional approaches to promoting quality. The first is restoring the stock of quality. The second is curbing its flow of deterioration. Although both approaches are widely used in real world settings, analytic models have tended to focus on one strategy or the other. We...

We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher...

This paper extends the theory of investment under uncertainty to incorporate fixed costs of investment, a wedge between the purchase price and sale price of capital, and potential irreversibility of investment. In this extended framework, investment is a non-decreasing function of q, the shadow...

We determine empirically how the Big Three automakers accommodate shocks to demand. They have the capability to change prices, alter labor inputs through temporary layoffs and overtime, or adjust inventories. These adjustments are interrelated, non-convex, and dynamic in nature. Combining weekly...

This paper uses firm-level panel data to analyze the role of financial factors in determining investment outcomes during the Korean financial crisis. Our identification strategy exploits the presence of foreign-denominated debt to measure shocks to the financial position of firms following the...

This paper studies the efficiency with which physical capital can be reallocated across sectors. It presents a model of a firm selling specialized capital in a thin resale market. The model predicts that the selling price depends not only on the sectoral specificity of capital, but also on the...

Capital expenditure plans at the beginning of the year, from a US government survey of firms, explain more than three quarters of the variation in real annual aggregate investment growth between 1948 and 1993. The negative correlation of contemporaneous investment and stock returns is explained...

This study develops a model of endogenous growth based on increasing returns due to firms' technology choices. Particular attention is paid to the implications of these choices, combined with the substitution of capital for labor, on economic growth in a general equilibrium model in which the...

This paper examines the relationship between openness, trade, and migration in the Asia-Pacific region during the post-1970 period. Conventional reduced-form empirical-growth specifications are augmented by an appeal to structural modelling, an extension that reveals a rich set of interactions...

We consider a neoclassical interpretation of Germany and Japan's rapid postwar growth that relies on a catch-up mechanism through capital accumulation where technology is embodied in new capital goods. Using a putty-clay model of production and investment, we are able to capture many of the key...