Explaining the Investment Boom of the 1990s
发现传统计量模型无法解释1990年代美国设备投资热潮,原因在于忽略了计算机投资的特殊行为:企业加速折旧且投资对资本成本更敏感。作者提出分解模型成功解释了这一现象。
Real equipment investment in the United States boomed in the 1990s, led by soaring investment in computers. We find that traditional aggregate econometric models completely fail to capture the magnitude of this growth—mainly because these models neglect to address two features that were crucial (and unique) to the 1990s' investment boom. First. the pace at which firms replace depreciated capital increased. Second, investment was more sensitive to the cost of capital. We document that these two features stem from the special behavior of investment in computers and therefore propose a disaggregated approach. This produces an econometric model that successfully explains the 1990s' equipment investment boom.