Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants

Mark Doms and Timothy Dunne

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: A common result from altering several fundamental assumptions of the neoclassical investment model with convex adjustment costs is that investment may occur in lumpy episodes. This paper takes a step back and asks "How lumpy is the investment?" We answer this question by documenting the distributions of investment and capital adjustment for a sample of over 33,000 manufacturing plants drawn from over 400 four-digit industries. We find that many plants do undergo large investment episodes, however, there is tremendous variation across plants in their capital accumulation patterns. This paper explores how the variation in capital accumulation patterns vary by observable plant and firm characteristics, and how large investment episodes at the plant level transmit into fluctuations in aggregate investment.

Keywords: Investment; Capital; Spikes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/1994/CES-WP-94-11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants (1998)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:94-11

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