Investment without Q

32 Pages Posted: 20 Mar 2012 Last revised: 10 May 2016

See all articles by Vito D. Gala

Vito D. Gala

Morningstar Investment Management LLC

Joao F. Gomes

The Wharton School

Date Written: January 22, 2013

Abstract

We estimate investment policy functions under general assumptions about technology and markets. Policy functions are easy to estimate and summarize the key predictions of any dynamic investment model. Because our method does not rely on Tobin's Q, it does not require information about market values and can be readily applied to study private firms. In addition, unlike Tobin's Q, we show that investment policy functions account for a large fraction of the variation in corporate investment. As such they are much better suited to evaluate and estimate dynamic investment models. Using this superior characterization of firm investment behaviour we then use indirect inference methods to estimate deep parameters of a structural model of investment featuring decreasing returns to scale and generalized adjustment cost functions.

Keywords: Corporate Investment, Firm Decisions, Indirect Inference

Suggested Citation

Gala, Vito D. and Gomes, João F., Investment without Q (January 22, 2013). AFA 2013 San Diego Meetings Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2024716 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2024716

Vito D. Gala (Contact Author)

Morningstar Investment Management LLC

22 W Washington Street
Chicago, IL 60602
United States

João F. Gomes

The Wharton School ( email )

2329 SH-DH
3620 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States
215-898-3666 (Phone)
215-898-6200 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://fnce.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/gomesj/

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