Capital Maintenance and Investment: Complements or Substitutes ?

Raouf Boucekkine () and José Ruiz-Tamarit

No 2001012, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the theoretical properties of demand for capital maintenance services. To this end, we consider two investment problems incorporating maintenance services and we analyse their steady state equilibria. At first, we shwo that if no variable capital utilization rate is allowed, investment and maintenance expenditures have the same qualitative properties, and so cannot be regarded as gross substitutes. If a variable rate of capital utilization is allowed, the occurence of substitution Vs complementarity features and the comparative statics properties depend on the sensitivity of the postulated capital depreciation function with respect to both the rate of capital utilization and the maintenance expenditures ratio. We prove that the case where the elasticity with respect to maintenance expenditures is lower, gives much better shaped demand functions and fits definitely better the recent real business cycles studies.

Keywords: Investment theory; Demand for maintenance services; Capacity utilization; Substitution Vs complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 E22 E32 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2001-05-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Capital Maintenance and Investment: Complements or Substitutes? (2003)
Working Paper: Capital maintenance and investment: complements or substitutes? (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:2001012

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