Relative Price Of Investment Goods Research Articles

The impact of capital goods prices on Africa's economic performance

AbstractOver the last four decades, the relative price of investment goods in Africa has gone through a relatively large decrease, resulting in a steady convergence towards the levels recorded in high‐income countries. This fact begs the following question: To what extent might the relative price decrease be a driving force behind the economic performance of this continent? The paper addresses this question from the perspective of a panel ARDL approach, using the Solow growth model—augmented with barriers to investment—as a framework. The results reveal that a one‐unit decrease in the relative price of investment leads, in the long term, to a 4% increase in per capita GDP, an increase that could be neutralised by a 6.5 percentage points decrease in the savings rate. The findings contribute to the case for a policy mix that combines policies geared towards reducing investment distortions with those promoting savings mobilisation.

Investment Demand and Structural Change

We study the joint evolution of the sectoral composition and the investment rate of developing economies. Using panel data for several countries in different stages of development, we document three novel facts: (a) the share of industry and the investment rate are strongly correlated and follow a hump‐shaped profile with development, (b) investment goods contain more domestic value added from industry and less from services than consumption goods do, and (c) the evolution of the sectoral composition of investment and consumption goods differs from the one of GDP. We build a multi‐sector growth model to fit these patterns and provide two important results. First, the hump‐shaped evolution of investment demand explains half of the hump in industry with development. Second, asymmetric sectoral productivity growth helps explain the decline in the relative price of investment goods along the development path, which in turn increases capital accumulation and promotes growth.

New Firms, Capital Intensity and the Labor Share: New Theoretical and Empirical Insights

This paper considers a two sectors heterogeneous firms model where firms’ specific production technology and capital intensity are endogenously determined through business dynamics. It shows that a shock to the relative price of investment goods is followed by the entrance of new firms characterized by higher capital intensity of production and lower labor income share. Using ORBIS firm-level data of the US economy, the paper finds strong and robust evidence confirming that new firms enter the market with higher capital intensity. Furthermore, firms-level data are used to show that the labor share is significantly affected by capital intensity, as well as by firms’ size and firms’ mark-up.

Technological Changes, Offshoring, and the Labor Share

Existing studies on the downward trend in the labor share of income mostly focus on changes within individual countries. I document, however, that half of the global decline in the labor share of income can be traced to the relocation of activities between countries. I develop a two-country model to show that when the relative price of investment goods falls, production activities with a small elasticity of substitution between capital and labor tend to get offshored from high- to low-wage countries. The model provides an explanation as to why such relocation may drive the labor share down in both developed and developing economies, as well as globally.

The Role of Financial Constraints on Labour Share Developments: Macro- and Micro-Level Evidence

Technological advancements have been affecting labour shares through a steep decline in the relative price of investment goods. This has lowered the cost of capital allowing firms to replace labour with capital. Nonetheless, financing obstacles could obstruct investment in both labour and capital. This paper assesses the role of financial constraints in hampering the effect of relative investment prices change on labour shares, using data for up to 26 OECD countries over the period 1995-2014. We find statistically significant, economically large and robust effects of financial constraints acting as a channel to hinder the effect of relative investment prices changes on labour shares. In particular, our results reveal that: (i) there has been a global decline in the labour share that coincides with declines in the relative price of investment goods and this decline has been heterogeneous across countries with different levels of financial constraints; (ii) industries highly dependent on external finance face a lower decline in the labour share following a drop in the relative investment price than industries that are less dependent on external finance, possibly because they are more constrained in accessing funds to finance investment; (iii) industry-level investment prices affect the labour share partly through changes within-firms rather than through composition effects, with smaller effects for firms that are more dependent on external finance and larger effects in less financially constrained and highly productive firms. These results are corroborated by an estimated aggregate elasticity of substitution between capital and labour greater than one, and higher for countries that are less financially constrained.

Technological Changes, Offshoring, and the Labor Share

Existing studies on the downward trend in the labor share of income mostly focus on changeswithin individual countries. I document, however, that half of the global decline in the laborshare of income can be traced to the relocation of activities between countries. I develop atwo-country model to show that when the relative price of investment goods falls, productionactivities with a small elasticity of substitution between capital and labor tend to getoffshored from high- to low-wage countries. The model provides an explanation as to whysuch relocation may drive the labor share down in both developed and developingeconomies, as well as globally.

Uncertainty shocks and the relative price of investment goods

This study empirically shows that higher uncertainty leads to not only a simultaneous drop in consumption and investment, but also a rise in the relative price of investment goods. This negative relationship between the relative price and quantity of investment suggests that heightened uncertainty depresses investment as an adverse supply shock to the investment sector. We demonstrate that a two-sector sticky price model with realistic asymmetric sectoral price rigidity can successfully account for our empirical findings. In particular, the underlying mechanism behind the negative relationship between the price and quantity of investment is limited intersectoral factor mobility. By contrast, the standard two-sector model featuring perfect factor mobility causes a negative co-movement between consumption and investment, contradicting the business cycle phenomenon.

The decline in investment shares is not caused by falling relative prices of capital: a note

Secularly declining GDP investment shares are often explained by the widespread fall in the relative price of investment goods. Granger non-causality tests applied to longer-term time series for a large number of industrial countries tend to reject that explanation.

Labor market frictions, investment and capital flows

The standard neoclassical model predicts that countries with higher productivity growth rates experience sharp increases in investment that are followed by rapid declines. This monotonic investment response contrasts with the empirical evidence that suggests a rather hump-shaped investment behavior. In this paper, I present a two-country general equilibrium model that generates hump-shaped investment responses from labor market frictions. In the model, I decompose investment into tradable and non-tradable components and show that an increase in the growth rate of a country results in scarcities of the non-tradable components which raise the relative price of investment goods. These scarcities occur because labor is unable to reallocate quickly between sectors within economies. This mechanism has two main implications. First, the induced movement in relative prices equates cross-country returns to capital and thus greatly reduces initial investment. Second, domestic saving now plays a more important role in financing investment, inducing a co-movement between these variables.

Explaining Momentum and Value Simultaneously

This paper proposes a unified risk-based explanation for momentum profits and the value premium in a neoclassical investment-based model. Winner firms have higher short-term productivity and hence more negative exposures to the price of investment goods than loser firms as a result of greater investment plans. Value firms have lower long-term productivity and higher operating leverage and hence higher sensitivities to neutral productivity shocks than growth firms. The model reproduces the coexistence of momentum profits and the value premium, the failure of the unconditional capital asset pricing model, the predictability of momentum profits by market states, and the long-term reversal of momentum profits. Empirical tests confirm a negative price of risk for the shock to the relative price of investment goods. This paper was accepted by Neng Wang, finance.

Why Are Real Interest Rates So Low? The Role of the Relative Price of Investment Goods

Across the industrialised world, real interest rates and nominal investment rates have fallen, while house prices and household debt ratios have risen. We present a calibrated OLG model which quantifies how much of these four trends can be explained with a fifth—the widespread fall in the relative price of investment goods. Relative to other explanations for low real interest rates, this trend is important because it can also account for the fall in nominal investment rates. The model can reproduce a small but economically significant part of the observed fall in interest rates and rises in house prices and household debt, and a larger part of the fall in the investment rate.

Why are Real Interest Rates so Low? Secular Stagnation and the Relative Price of Investment Goods

Across the industrialised world, real interest rates and nominal investment rates have fallen, while house prices and household debt ratios have risen. I present an OLG model which explains these four trends with a fifth - the widespread fall in the relative price of investment goods. When capital goods are cheaper, a given quantity of saving buys more of them, but the resulting capital deepening lowers the marginal product of each one. Interest rates fall, reducing the user cost of housing, raise house prices and household debt. Preventing the accumulation of debt leads to a bigger fall in interest rates.

Distribution‐Utilization Interactions: A Race‐to‐the‐Bottom Among Oecd Countries

AbstractWe explore four decades of short‐ and long‐run interactions between income distribution and real economic activity for a panel of OECD countries. Our regressions suggest that the dynamic interaction of these two variables is rather complicated. Estimating the long‐run point, we argue that this equilibrium has been shifting as a matter of public policy. We hypothesize that a race‐to‐the‐bottom arises from a need to be competitive in globalized markets. We report evidence that globalization does have a negative long‐run effect on the wage share. We also find that other factors may have been important: unionization appears to be pro‐wage share, while contractionary monetary policy, financialization, and a lower relative price of investment goods tend to be anti‐wage share.

Reexamining the cyclical behavior of the relative price of investment

We document the cyclical behavior of the relative price of investment goods for the US economy over the last fifty years. There is no robust evidence that this relative price is countercyclical. For the post-1983 period, it is predominantly procyclical.

Secular Stagnation: The Long View

Four explanations for secular stagnation are distinguished: a rise in global saving, slow population growth that makes investment less attractive, adverse trends in technology and productivity growth, and a decline in the relative price of investment goods. A long view from economic history is most supportive of the last of these four views.

The Global Decline of the Labor Share*

AbstractThe stability of the labor share of income is a key foundation in macroeconomic models. We document, however, that the global labor share has significantly declined since the early 1980s, with the decline occurring within the large majority of countries and industries. We show that the decrease in the relative price of investment goods, often attributed to advances in information technology and the computer age, induced firms to shift away from labor and toward capital. The lower price of investment goods explains roughly half of the observed decline in the labor share, even when we allow for other mechanisms influencing factor shares, such as increasing profits, capital-augmenting technology growth, and the changing skill composition of the labor force. We highlight the implications of this explanation for welfare and macroeconomic dynamics.

Declining Labor Shares and the Global Rise of Corporate Savings

We document a 5 percentage point decline in the share of global corporate income paid to labor from the mid-1970s to the late 2000s. Increased dividend payments did not absorb all of the resulting increase in prots, and therefore, the supply of corporate savings increased by over 20 percentage points as a share of total global savings. These trends were stronger in countries experiencing greater declines in the relative price of investment goods. We develop a model featuring CES production and imperfections in the ow of funds between households and corporations. These two departures from the standard neoclassical model imply that the labor share uctuates and the sectoral composition of savings aects macroeconomic allocations. We calibrate the shape of the production function and the capital market imperfections to match the cross-sectional variation in the two trends. In response to the observed global decline in investment prices, our model generates more than half of the observed changes in labor shares and corporate savings. The non-unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labor interacts with imperfections in the capital market to jointly shape the economy’s dynamics.

DO INVESTMENT‐SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES MATTER FOR BUSINESS FLUCTUATIONS? EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN

AbstractThe observed decline in the relative price of investment goods to consumption goods in Japan suggests the existence of investment‐specific technological (IST) changes. We examine whether IST changes are a major source of business fluctuations in Japan, by estimating a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model using Bayesian methods. We show that IST changes are less important than neutral technological changes in explaining output fluctuations. We also demonstrate that investment fluctuations are mainly driven by shocks to investment adjustment costs. Such shocks represent variations of costs involved in changing investment spending, such as financial intermediation costs. We find that the estimated series of the investment adjustment cost shock correlates strongly with the diffusion index of firms' financial position in the Tankan (Short‐term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan). Therefore, we argue that the large decline in investment growth in the early 1990s was due to an increase in investment adjustment costs stemming from firms' financial constraints after the collapse of Japan's asset price bubble.

Productivity Growth in Goods and Services Across US States: What Can We Learn from Factor Prices?

This paper exploits the dual accounting technique to uncover multi-factor productivity growth patterns for goods and services across US states from 1980 to 2007. Due to changes in sectoral classifications, the period is divided into two parts, 1980-1997 and 1998-2007. Over both periods, states exhibit a wide range of productivity growth rates with the goods sector showing much larger variations. The variations are larger for the second time period with some states recording productivity growth as high as almost nine percent annually while other states showing declines at more than two percent. Underlying the wide variation in productivity growth are variations in both wage growth and real user cost growth. Since 1998, the real user cost declines at almost two per cent annually. Incorporating human capital into the analysis makes wage growth and, hence, productivity growth lower in both sectors, and on average negative in the second period. Scaling up the analysis to the national level, we also find that there are large differences between the growth rates of primal based measures of marginal product of capital and our calculations of real user cost growth. This can only be partially explained by the anomalous behavior of particular industries such as mining and real estate services, and to some degree due to the declining relative price of investment goods.

International business cycles and the relative price of investment goods

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