Corporate investment response to an easing in bond funding cost
利用欧洲央行公司债购买计划作为自然实验，研究发现企业融资成本下降后，会增加维护性投资以保全现有资产，而非扩大规模投资新设备。
We study the cost of funding channel by investigating how an easing in firms’ external financing cost affects corporate investment. This paper employs ECB’s corporate security purchase program as a quasi-natural experiment that reduces firms’ bond funding costs. Using balance sheet information on non-financial firms in France, we find that firms increase maintenance investment to preserve existing assets, instead of investing in new equipment to grow in scale. Our findings suggest that firms face non-convex costs in adjusting their capital stock and do not smoothly adjust investment following a shock in the cost of capital.