Capital Mismatch and Sectoral Reallocation

这个项目的目的是通过记录和解释实物资本在经济部门之间的重新分配来提高我们对投资行为的理解。该项目将解决以下问题：资本对特定公司或经济部门的具体程度如何？将实物资本从一种用途转移到另一种用途的成本有多高？这种投资行为可能会对商业周期产生怎样的影响？将创建和分析关于个别设备销售的新数据集。这些数据将被用来研究使用资本的跨行业流动以及这种流动造成的经济折旧。为了量化资本的特殊性，将对经济折旧率如何取决于资本是留在一个行业内还是跨行业流动进行分析。初步研究表明，当资本跨行业流动时，它会损失很大一部分价值。此外，还将使用公司层面的会计数据分析资本的总流动。这些数据将被用来分析公司资本的总增加和总减去之间的关系。这些数据还将被用来估计公司决定停止运营所需的时间长度。这些决策滞后在数量上可能是重要的。事实上，由于不确定性造成的决定滞后可能比一旦做出决定后出售和重新安装资本的滞后时间更长。最后，我们将使用一个一般均衡模拟模型来分析在代价高昂的资本流动条件下配置冲击的综合效应。该模型的规范和参数化将从本研究的实证结果中得出。这一模型将有助于量化资本重新配置在商业周期中的作用。考虑到资本重新配置的潜在高成本和长期滞后，商业周期的影响可能是巨大的。

The purpose of this project is to improve our understanding of investment behavior by documenting and explaining the reallocation of physical capital across economic sectors. The project will address issues such as: How specific is capital to a particular firm or economic sector? How costly is it to move physical capital from one use to another? and How might such investment behavior influence the business cycle? A new data set on the sale of individual items of equipment will be created and analyzed. These data will be used to study the cross-industry flow of used capital and the economic depreciation resulting from such flows. How economic depreciation rates depend on whether capital stays within an industry or flows across industries will analyzed in order to quantify the specificity of capital. Preliminary work suggests that capital loses much of its value when it is moved across industries. In addition, the gross flows of capital using firm-level accounting data will be analyzed. These data will be used to analyze the relationship between gross additions and gross subtractions to firms' capital. These data will also be used to estimate the length of time taken by firms to decide to discontinue operations. These decision lags might be quantitatively important. Indeed, the decision lag owing to uncertainty could be longer than the lag in selling and reinstalling the capital once the decision has been made. Finally, a general equilibrium simulation model will be used to analyze the aggregate effects of allocative shocks under costly capital mobility. The specification and parameterization of this model will derive from the empirical findings of this research. This model will help quantify the role of capital reallocation in the business cycle. Given the potentially high costs and long lags for reallocating capital, the business-cycle effects may be substantial.