Does Firm Investment Respond to Peers’ Investment?
研究了企业投资如何受同一产品市场其他企业投资的影响，发现存在显著的互补性，尤其在集中市场、异质性强和较小企业中更明显，支持管理者利用同行投资作为信息来源的理论。
We study whether, how, and why the investment of a firm depends on the investment of other firms in the same product market. Using an instrumental variable based on the presence of local knowledge externalities, we find a sizeable complementarity of investment among product market peers, holding across a large majority of sectors. Peer effects are stronger in concentrated markets, featuring more heterogeneous firms, and for smaller firms with less precise information. Our findings are consistent with a model in which managers are imperfectly informed about fundamentals and use peers’ investments as a source of information. Product market peer effects in investment could amplify shocks in production networks. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.