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Journal Article
A panel study of investment: sales, cash flow, the cost of capital, and leverage
This article compares the investment spending for each of 396 corporations during the late 1980s and early 1990s to projections of their spending derived from several basic models of investment. According to these models, capital spending, on average, adheres closely to output, profits, and the cost of capital. The pattern of average forecast errors derived from the statistical models does not correspond very closely to measures of indebtedness, liquidity, size, or type of business. It is not surprising that these variables should influence capital spending so little, once the general ...
Journal Article
Investment and employment by manufacturing plants
The preceding article analyzed the determinants of investment at the macroeconomic level. In general, analysis of investment at this degree of aggregation implies that all firms in the economy react similarly to the same macro-level variables. Yet, examining macro data may obscure a great deal of variation in the forces that affect different firms, thus making quantification of the impact of these forces difficult. Since different types of firms face an array of different constraints, the authors analyze employment and investment at manufacturing plants at a finer level of distinction than ...
Journal Article
How erratic is money growth?
Journal Article
Tax reform and stock prices
Journal Article
Forecasting investment with models and surveys of capital spending
The U.S. Department of Commerce regularly surveys businesses on their plans for capital investment. This article assesses the contribution that these surveys make to forecasts of business investment, once other economic variables are taken into account. The author finds that the surveys have only marginally improved forecasts since the 1970s. For short-term forecasts, the history of investment spending and output does more to reduce forecast errors than do the surveys. For forecasts of a year or more, the survey information is not as useful as that in the historical movements of various ...
Journal Article
Has the stock market become too narrow?
The price of equity has soared during the past five years, stoking concerns that stocks' prices might have risen too far, too fast. These concerns became more pressing as the values of equities rose much more rapidly than earnings during 1998 and early 1999, lifting stocks' prices to record highs relative to their earnings. Although many indexes of stocks' prices continued to rise sharply in 1998 and 1999, fewer stocks contributed to this performance. The market became more narrow as the running count of stocks whose prices were rising fell behind that for stocks whose prices were dropping. ; ...
Journal Article
The determinants of business investment: has capital spending been surprisingly low?
Many are worried that since 1980 capital investment by businesses has been lower than expected. Unusual circumstances, such as changes in savings patterns or in business leverage, a credit crunch, or widespread adoption of a shorter-term outlook, have been suggested as culprits. To see whether investment spending has indeed departed from its traditional determinants, this article compares capital spending during the 1980s and early 1990s with projections of spending derived from historical relationships between investment and various measures of economic activity. ; The results show that ...
Journal Article
The practice of central banking in other industrialized countries
Central banks in larger industrialized countries increasingly favor market operations, the buying and selling of securities, over standing facilities, such as lending and deposit facilities, in conducting their monetary policies. In their market operations, foreign central banks most commonly trade securities issued or guaranteed by their governments and repurchase agreements that are backed by a variety of assets, including private securities and securities denominated in foreign currencies. Some also trade in securities that are issued by other governments or private securities that are ...