경제 불확실성과 한국 기업의 투자

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of economic uncertainty on firm investment. 67,128 observations from 2006 to 2017 of 5,594 Korean firms from the Business Activity Survey and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) indices of Korea, the United States, and China are used as data. The long-term cointegration relationship between firm sales and capital stock is confirmed, and the hypothesis that economic uncertainty affects firm investment along with demand is verified through an error correction model. In particular, Korean firms with subsidiaries in the US and China are analyzed separately to investigate the effect of the US and Chinese EPU. According to the analysis, Korean firms show a short-term reduced response to irreversible investment, so that the coefficient of influence of the square term of the change in sales on the change in firm investment shows a positive coefficient (a convex type of firm investment response). In addition, economic uncertainty affects firm investment through interaction with sales change (the cautionary effect). In particular, the cautionary effect was more significant and clear when China’s economic uncertainty was taken as an independent variable.