This paper investigates how variations in macroeconomic uncertainty distort commercial banks' allocation of loanable funds by analyzing the dispersion of banks' total loan-to-asset ratios over a quarter-century period.

We investigate the impact of debt on a panel of U.S. manufacturing firms' capital investment behavior as the underlying firm-specific and market-level uncertainty changes. Our estimates show that the influence of leverage on capital investment may be stimulating or mitigating depending on the...

We investigate the impact of measures of uncertainty on firms' capital investment behavior using a panel of U.S. firms. Increases in firm-specific and CAPM-based measures have a significant negative effect on investment spending, while market-based uncertainty has a positive impact.