The asset Redeployability Channel: How Uncertainty Affects Corporate Investment
发布时间:2013-11-15
Topic:
The asset Redeployability Channel: How Uncertainty Affects Corporate Investment
Time:
星期四,2013-11-15 10:30-12:00
Venue:
Speaker:
Hyunseob Kim

How do frictions in asset markets affect corporate investment decisions when economic uncertainty changes? To address this question, we (I) construct measures of asset redeployability that account for the usability of assets both within and across industries and (ii) exploit plausibly exogenous increases in uncertainty spurred by major events. We first verify that in industries with higher redeploybility, reading in secondary asset markets is more active and occurs across industries more often. We find that after an increase (decrease) in aggregate uncertainty, firms using less redelopyble capital reduce (increase) investment more relative to firms using more redeployabitlity capital. Our results suggest that real frictions related to asset liquidation make firms cautious about investment expenditures when the uncertainty about investment opportunities increases. And this effect reverses once uncertainty decreases.