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Internal Net Worth and the Investment Process: An Application to U.S. Agriculture

R. Glenn Hubbard1; Anil Kashyap1,2,3

1 National Bureau of Economic Research · 2 University of Chicago · 3 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Journal of Political Economy 1992 open access

Recent models of firm investment decisions stressing informational imperfections in capital markets provide a foundation for interpreting evidence that movements in internal finance can predict investment spending, even after one controls for measures of firms' investment opportunities. While such evidence is suggestive, it is often open to other interpretations. We examine these models using data on equipment investment in the U.S. agricultural sector. This sector is particularly interesting because it has experienced large fluctuations in net worth and the profitability of investment, and reasonable measures of net worth can be constructed. Our findings provide support for a class of "internal funds" models of investment under asymmetric information.

DOI
10.1086/261827
Volume
100 (3)
Pages
506-534
Language
en
Export
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