Investment: Theory, Estimates, and Public Policy

投资：理论、估计和公共政策

• 批准号: 0962219
• 负责人: Christopher House
• 金额: $ 36.43万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-01 至 2014-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0962219&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Investment; Theory; Estimates; Public; Policy

Project SummaryInvestment: Theory, Estimates, and Public PolicyThis project will analyze the determinants of investment spending. It will quantify several key determinants and study how they affect investment both in theory and in practice. The proposal features two related lines of research. The first research component is an empirical analysis of investment at a disaggregated level. The second component develops and estimates a structural model of investment. The two research components are complementary. The empirical results are used to inform, test, and estimate parameters of the structural model. In turn, the structural model provides important insights into the effects of recent and future investment policies. The first part of the project presents an empirical analysis of investment. This research establishes key empirical facts that investment theories should match. It also evaluates the empirical success of several existing theories. Specifically, using a panel of type-specific investment data, four prominent empirical issues are studied: (1) the cyclicality of pre-tax and after-tax investment prices; (2) the role of uncertainty in investment spending; (3) the response of investment to tax subsidies and (4) the response of automobile production and prices to the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009, also known as "cash for clunkers.?" The primary data sets used are the BEA underlying detail tables for investment, recently available measures of economic uncertainty, and an updated, revised set of type-specific investment tax subsidies.The second part of the proposal presents a structural equilibrium model of investment. The theoretical framework builds on previous studies which feature fixed adjustment costs at the microlevel. The model adds to this research by introducing a new investment timing friction not featured in earlier work. The timing friction allows firm-level heterogeneity to have a substantial influence on equilibrium investment dynamics. This is a ignificant extension of the research on fixed costs and firm-level heterogeneity since important effects of such heterogeneity are not present in earlier models. As a result, the proposed framework will provide a better guide to analyzing investment policy. The magnitude of the timing friction will be estimated with type-specific investment data. The empirical work in the first part of the proposal will provide several parameters to assess the fit of the theoretical model and to develop estimates of the effects of specific policy changes.Summary of intellectual merit. The project will develop a modern model of investment that incorporates key frictions that imply important firm-level heterogeneity. While the model incorporates many complex modern features, it is also analytically tractable and yields sharp testable predictions. Hence, this research will allow modern investment models to confront the data in a meaningful way and to be used to evaluate specific policies.Summary of broader implications. This research will provide both theoretical and empirical guidance for government policies designed either to affect overall economic activity by stimulating investment or to promote investment to increase economic growth. Additionally, the results of this analysis will be valuable to studying business cycles by shedding light on how various shocks affect investment activity.

投资：理论，估计和公共政策本项目将分析投资支出的决定因素。它将量化几个关键的决定因素，并研究它们如何在理论和实践中影响投资。该建议的特点是两个相关的研究路线。第一个研究部分是对分类投资进行实证分析。第二个组成部分开发和估算投资的结构模型。这两项研究是相辅相成的。实证结果用于通知，测试和估计结构模型的参数。反过来，结构模型为了解近期和未来投资政策的影响提供了重要见解。本项目的第一部分对投资进行了实证分析。这项研究建立了投资理论应该匹配的关键经验事实。它还评估了几个现有理论的经验成功。具体而言，使用一组特定类型的投资数据，研究了四个突出的实证问题：（1）税前和税后投资价格的周期性;（2）不确定性在投资支出中的作用;（3）投资对税收补贴的反应，（4）汽车生产和价格对2009年《消费者回收和节约援助法》的反应，也被称为“旧车换现金"“所使用的主要数据集是投资的基本细节表、最近可用的经济不确定性指标以及一套更新、修订的特定类型投资税收补贴。提案的第二部分提出了投资的结构均衡模型。理论框架建立在以前的研究，在微观层面上的固定调整成本的功能。该模型通过引入一个新的投资时机摩擦，增加了这项研究，而不是在早期的工作。时间摩擦允许公司层面的异质性，有一个重大的影响均衡投资动态。这是对固定成本和企业异质性研究的重要延伸，因为这种异质性的重要影响在早期模型中并不存在。因此，拟议的框架将为分析投资政策提供更好的指导。时间摩擦的大小将根据具体类型的投资数据进行估计。建议第一部分的实证工作将提供若干参数，以评估理论模型的适用性，并对具体政策变化的影响作出估计。该项目将开发一个现代投资模型，其中包括隐含重要的公司层面异质性的关键摩擦。虽然该模型结合了许多复杂的现代特征，但它也易于分析，并产生了尖锐的可测试预测。因此，这项研究将使现代投资模型以一种有意义的方式面对数据，并用于评估具体的政策。这项研究将为政府制定政策提供理论和经验指导，这些政策旨在通过刺激投资来影响整体经济活动，或促进投资以提高经济增长。此外，这项分析的结果将有助于研究商业周期，揭示各种冲击如何影响投资活动。