Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less over Time?
研究发现美国上市公司资本支出占总资产比例在1980至2020年间下降超过一半，且无法用常规投资决定因素解释，但符合生产转向依赖无形资产的趋势，对理解企业投资行为变化有参考价值。
Capital expenditures of U.S. public firms, relative to total assets, decrease by more than half from 1980 to 2020. The decline is pervasive across industries and firms of different characteristics and cannot be explained by the usual determinants of investment and many other seemingly plausible reasons. The decline is consistent with the transformation in production technology — firms rely more on intangible capital and less on fixed assets in production. Industry-level analyses yield supporting evidence. We observe similar declining trend in capital expenditure in other developed countries but not in most emerging markets.