Econometric Studies of Investment Behavior: A Review

IN THIS PAPER the reader will find a review of econometric studies of investment in fixed capital. A review of these studies through 1953 was given in 1957 by J. Meyer and E. Kuh [86], and a detailed review through 1960 was presented by R. Eisner and R. H. Strotz in 1963 [36]. In this review we concentrate on recent research on time series of investment expenditures for individual firms and industries. Our point of departure is the flexible accelerator model of investment originated by H. B. Chenery [13, 1952] and L. M. Koyck [74, 1954]. In this model attention is focused on the time structure of the investment process. The desired level of capital is determined by longrun considerations. Changes in desired capital are transformed into actual investment expenditures by a geometric distributed lag fuinction-the specification of desired capital has been the subject of a wide variety of alternative theories; the alternative theories do agree on the validity of the flexible accelerator mechanism. Denoting the actual level of capital by K and the desired level by K+, capital is adjusted toward its desired level by a constant proportion of the difference between desired and actual capital,