Firm-level investment paths are commonly characterised by periods of low or zero investment punctuated by large investment ‘spikes’. We document that such spikes are important for understanding firm and aggregate level investment in the UK. We show that annual variation in aggregate...

We report laboratory experiments investigating the cyclicality of profit-enhancing investment in a competitive environment. In our setting, optimal investment is counter-cyclical when investment costs fall following market downturns. However, we do not observe counter-cyclical investment....

To measure the real effects of credit-supply disruptions during financial crises, we develop a quantitative model of firm investment and debt that features firm heterogeneity and financial frictions. We apply this framework to a novel, census-type panel dataset for manufacturing firms and find...

This paper studies the impacts of the interactions between the changing macroeconomic conditions and the nature of competition on firms' investment timing decisions. With a model featuring business-cycle variations in both the profit level and the expected growth rate and volatility of the...

The empirical performance of the Q theory of investment can be significantly improved by simultaneously considering the time- and the frequency-varying features of the investment-Q relationship. Using continuous wavelet tools, I assess the investment-Q sensitivity at different frequencies and...

We study the performance of investments made at different points of an investment cycle. We use a large data set covering hotels in the U.S., with rich details on their location, characteristics and performance. We find that hotels built during hotel construction booms underperform their peers....

Leading production-based asset pricing models predict that the sources of fluctuations in real investment and (scaled) stock prices are the same. Yet, extant empirical findings point to a large difference in these sources. We revisit this empirical question by deriving a present-value relation...

This paper identifies the aggregate financial shocks and quantifies their effects on business investment based on an estimated DSGE model with firm-level heterogeneity. On average, financial shocks contribute only 1.1% of the variation in U.S. public firms' aggregate investment. The negligible...

Our paper provides the first cross-country evidence on the distinct dynamics of tangible and intangible investments during and after the global financial crisis. The pre-crisis rise of intangible-to-tangible capital ratio was reversed outside the U.S. due to a greater decline of intangible...

We study the performance of investments made at different points of an investment cycle. We use a large data set covering hotels in the U.S., with rich details on their location, characteristics and performance. We find that hotels built during hotel construction booms underperform their peers....