Investment, Uncertainty and Irreversibility: Evidence from Belgian Accounting Data
National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 23
41 Pages Posted: 18 Oct 2010
Date Written: May 1, 2002
Abstract
This paper investigates the effects of uncertainty on the investment behaviour using firm-level data for a sample of Belgian manufacturing firms. In general, the results confirm former analysis at the aggregate level, stating that uncertainty does matter but that the sign of the effect and its magnitude largely depend on which proxies are used and how they are defined. It is shown that uncertainty has mainly an impact on the decision to invest and to a much lesser extent on the amount invested. Furthermore, the difference between reversible and irreversible investment is crucial. The impact of volatility on irreversible investment is far more larger than on reversible investment. In some cases, the amount of reversible investment will increase with higher volatility.
Keywords: investment, uncertainty, irreversibility
JEL Classification: D81, D92, C23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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