What Explains the Lagged Investment Effect

Working Paper: NBER ID: w16889

Authors: Janice C. Eberly; Sergio Rebelo; Nicolas Vincent

Abstract: The best predictor of current investment at the firm level is lagged investment. This lagged-investment effect is empirically more important than the cash-flow and Q effects combined. We show that the specification of investment adjustment costs proposed by Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans (2005) predicts the presence of a lagged-investment effect and that a generalized version of their model is consistent with the behavior of firm-level data from Compustat.

Keywords: Investment; Lagged Investment Effect; Tobin's q; Cash Flow

JEL Codes: E2


Causal Claims Network Graph

Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.


Causal Claims

CauseEffect
investment adjustment cost model (CEE) (G31)lagged investment effect (E22)
lagged investment (E22)current investment (E22)
cash flow + Tobin's q (D25)current investment (E22)
cash flow (E50)current investment (E22)

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