Variable Wages and Prices and the Demand for Capital with Discrete and Continuous Adjustments
研究不确定的价格-工资比率如何影响小企业的资本需求，发现对于不连续调整资本存量的企业，不确定性增加会提高资本需求，且影响取决于调整间隔长度。
Managers must be concerned with the effects of uncertain prices and wages on the investment decisions of firms. Suppose, for instance, that more erratic macroeconomic policies cause managers to anticipate greater uncertainty about future price-wage ratios. In this paper we identify the effects of increased uncertainty on the demand for capital by a small firm. Our results indicate that for firms which do not continuously adjust their capital stock, increased uncertainty about future price-wage ratios increases the demand for capital. The results also reveal that the effects of uncertainty on the demand for capital depend on the length of the interval between capital acquisition decisions. That is, the effects of uncertainty on the demand for capital depend on whether investment decisions are revised continuously, monthly, yearly, or at more infrequent intervals. We consider a multiperiod model of a small firm. The firm views prices, wages, and the discount rate as exogenous variables given by the economy. Managers are assumed to adjust the firm's demand for labor continuously and to adjust the capital stock at discrete time intervals with the objective of maximizing the present discounted value of cash flows. To assure a firm of determinate size, we postulate a Cobb-Douglas production function with decreasing returns to scale. The analysis employs specific assumptions about present and future prices, wages, and the firm's cost of capital (i.e., discount rate). Future prices and wages are assumed to be determined by a stochastic bivariate log-normal process. This exogenous process permits random changes in the price-wage ratio.2 Such a stochastic price-wage process could be generated by an erratic monetary policy if prices and wages adjust at different rates. Similar price-wage dynamics might ensue if the monopolistic labor sector experiences random changes in its bargaining power. This assumed price-wage process is not necessarily consistent with the changes in production and in the demand for labor which will be induced in