Investment decisions and capital accumulationfirm-level evidence from Brazil

Resumo

Using firm-level data from an administrative Brazilian dataset, I document a few stylized facts regarding capital stock accumulation patterns and investment decisions. Finding evidence largely in favor of micro-level lumpiness of investment as it was found for American firms, I document that there are a few particularities in the behavior of Brazilian firms. First, I document that the distribution of the growth rate of capital is more dispersed, with “fatter” tails. Second, I also show that, as economic activity, the volume of investment and capital stock are more concentrated on a small number of firms, micro-level lumpiness might have a bigger role in understanding aggregate movements. Third, I show that the observable characteristics of Brazilian firms explain a lot more of sudden movements in capital growth when compared to the U.S., after controlling for industry specific characteristics and other variables. Fourth and last, I compute statistical measures related to the investment rate distribution, which show that investment at the firm-level seems to be even “lumpier” in Brazil, with firms investing less on average, while experiencing more episodes of investment spikes and periods of inaction.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2018

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/24314

Temas

Economia

Palavras-chave

Investment decisionsLumpy investmentCapital stockCapital growthCrescimento de capitalDecisões de investimentoEconomiaInvestimentosInvestimentos de capitalCapital socialCapital (Economia)