Capital Mismatch and Sectoral Reallocation

该项目的目的是通过记录和解释实体资本在经济部门之间的再分配，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是多少？这种投资行为如何影响商业周期？将创建并分析单个设备项目销售的新数据集。这些数据将用于研究使用资本的跨行业流动和由此产生的经济折旧。为了量化资本的特殊性，将分析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。初步研究表明，当资本在各行业之间流动时，其价值会损失很多。此外，将使用公司层面的会计数据来分析资本的总流动。这些数据将用于分析企业资本的总增加和总减少之间的关系。这些数据还将用于估计公司决定停止运营所需的时间。这些决策滞后可能在数量上很重要。事实上，由于不确定性而导致的决策滞后，可能比一旦做出决定后出售和重新配置资金的滞后更长。最后，本文将使用一般均衡模拟模型来分析高成本资本流动下配置冲击的总体效应。该模型的规范和参数化将来源于本研究的实证结果。该模型将有助于量化资本再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滞后，商业周期效应可能是巨大的。

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.