Swing for the Fences When the Economy is Slumping: Capital Investments in the Macro-Economic Context

Abstract

Environment plays a powerful role in the strategic decisions of the firm, and a fundamental strategic decision faced by the firm in this environmental context is determining the amount of capital resources to invest in the business each year. Factors affecting the decision may include an assessment of how executives choose to invest capital among the different opportunities available to them, the geographic location where capital investments are made, and why the level of capital investment fits the current industry environment. But the decision of when to invest, an important strategic phenomenon identified by executives and in the business press, has been generally overlooked by scholars. Our empirical analysis indicates that most firms typically invest more capital when the state of the macro-economy is expanding and less during a downturn. In spite of this common investment pattern, we theorize and then find a consistent profit advantage for firms that invest more capital when the macro-economic cycle...