Why Does Capital No Longer Flow More to the Industries with the Best Growth Opportunities?
Fisher College of Business Working Paper No. 2016-03-15
Charles A. Dice Center Working Paper No. 2016-15
55 Pages Posted: 16 Sep 2016 Last revised: 5 Dec 2016
There are 2 versions of this paper
Why Does Capital No Longer Flow More to the Industries with the Best Growth Opportunities?
Why Does Capital No Longer Flow More to the Industries with the Best Growth Opportunities?
Date Written: December 4, 2016
Abstract
With functionally efficient capital markets, we expect capital to flow more to the industries with the best growth opportunities. As a result, these industries should invest more and see their assets grow more relative to industries with the worst growth opportunities. We find that industries that receive more funds have a higher industry Tobin’s q until the mid-1990s, but not since then. Since industries with a higher funding rate grow more, there is a negative correlation not only between an industry’s funding rate and industry q but also between capital expenditures and industry q since the mid-1990s. We show that capital no longer flows more to the industries with the best growth opportunities because, since the middle of the 1990s, firms in high q industries increasingly repurchase shares rather than raise more funding from the capital markets.
Keywords: capital markets, investment, industry, equity flows, debt flows, external finance, equity repurchases, Tobin’s q
JEL Classification: G31, G35, E22, E44, L16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation