Why Does Capital No Longer Flow More to the Industries with the Best Growth Opportunities?

Dong Lee, Han Shin and René Stulz

No 22924, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: With functionally efficient capital markets, we expect capital to flow more to the industries with the best growth opportunities. As a result, these industries should invest more and see their assets grow more relative to industries with the worst growth opportunities. We find that industries that receive more funds have a higher industry Tobin’s q until the mid-1990s, but not since then. Since industries with a higher funding rate grow more, there is a negative correlation not only between an industry’s funding rate and industry q but also between capital expenditures and industry q since the mid-1990s. We show that capital no longer flows more to the industries with the best growth opportunities because, since the middle of the 1990s, firms in high q industries increasingly repurchase shares rather than raise more funding from the capital markets.

JEL-codes: E22 E44 G31 G35 L16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Note: CF
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Working Paper: Why Does Capital No Longer Flow More to the Industries with the Best Growth Opportunities? (2016)
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