2020 Klein Lecture-Investment and Subjective Uncertainty

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bloom, Nicholas; Davis, Steven J.; Foster, Lucia; Ohlmacher, Scott; Saporta-Eksten, Itay
• 署名单位: Stanford University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors; Tel Aviv University
• 刊物名称: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0020-6598
• DOI: 10.1111/iere.12709
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1591-1606
• 关键词: demand

摘要

A longstanding challenge in evaluating the impact of uncertainty on investment is obtaining measures of managers' subjective uncertainty. We address this challenge by using a detailed survey measure of uncertainty collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for approximately 25,000 manufacturing plants. We find three key results. First, investment is negatively associated with higher uncertainty. Second, uncertainty is also negatively related to employment growth and overall shipments growth, which highlights the damaging impact of uncertainty. Third, rental capital and temporary workers are positively correlated with uncertainty, demonstrating that businesses switch from less flexible to more flexible inputs under uncertainty.