Why Demand Uncertainty Curbs Investment: Evidence from a Panel of Italian Manufacturing Firms
Why Demand Uncertainty Curbs Investment: Evidence from a Panel of Italian Manufacturing Firms
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为什么需求不确定性会抑制投资：来自意大利制造企业小组的证据
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Golinelli
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
G. Parigi;Maria Elena Bontempi;R. Golinelli
从理论角度来看，由于生产技术、产品市场竞争程度等多种因素的影响，企业产品需求的不确定性可能不会对投资产生明显的影响。迄今为止，由于实证研究都是基于横截面分析，因此还不可能在时间维度上对不同因素的相互作用进行更深入的研究。这一遗漏使得对投资与不确定性关系的估计可能出现偏差。本文的目的是通过使用 1996 年至 2004 年期间的意大利公司样本来扩展实证文献的发现，涵盖整个商业周期。有关公司投资计划、预期未来销售和需求不确定性的一组调查数据的可用性使我们能够解释不可观察的个体公司差异、宏观经济冲击以及投资与不确定性关系的时间演变。我们论文的一个重要发现涉及 1996 年至 2004 年意大利企业所面临的竞争的作用。意大利制造企业市场力量的逐渐丧失以及劳动力投入灵活性的增强可能削弱了不确定性对投资决策的负面影响。我们表明，在重复的横截面估计中，忽略公司特定效应以及上述动态相互作用，将导致关于需求不确定性在解释投资决策中的相关性的误导性结论。
From a theoretical point of view, uncertainty over the demand for a firmi?½s product may not have clear effects on investments, because of the influence of a number of factors, such as the production technology and the amount of competition in the product market.Until now, a deeper investigation of the interplay of different factors in the temporal dimension has not been possible because the empirical research has been based on cross-section analysis. This omission makes biased estimates of the investment-uncertainty relationship likely.The aim of this paper is to extend the findings of the empirical literature by using a panel of Italian firms over the period 1996-2004, covering a complete business cycle. The availability of a panel of survey data on companiesi?½ investment plans, expected future sales and demand uncertainty allows us to account for unobservable individual firm differences, macroeconomic shocks and the temporal evolution of the investment-uncertainty relationship. A key finding of our paper concerns the role of the competition faced by Italian firms in 1996-2004. The gradual loss of market power experienced by Italian manufacturing firms along with the increasing flexibility of labour input may have weakened the negative effect of uncertainty on investment decisions. We show that, in repeated cross-section estimates, the omission of firm-specific effects together with the dynamic interplay described above, would have lead to misleading conclusions about the relevance of demand uncertainty in explaining investment decisions.