Suchergebnisse

We use earnings forecasts from securities analysts to construct a new measure of the neoclassical fundamentals that drive investment spending. We find that investment responds significantly to our new measure of fundamentals but is insensitive to cash flow, even for firms typically thought to be liquidity constrained. These results have two key implications. First, fundamentals may be more important for investment spending than would be suggested by the results to date from investment-q models. Second, the positive cash-flow effects obtained in such models may reflect a failure to control properly for fundamentals rather than the presence of financial constraints.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- PART I: INTRODUCTION -- 1. Questions about Business Cycles -- PART II: BUSINESS CYCLE DURATIONS -- 2. Have Postwar Economic Fluctuations Been Stabilized? -- 3. Shorter Recessions and Longer Expansions -- 4. A Nonparametric Investigation of Duration Dependence in the American -- 5. Further Evidence on Business Cycle Duration Dependence -- 6. Measuring Business Cycles: A Modern Perspective -- 7. Regime Switching with Time-Varying Transition Probabilities -- PART III: BUSINESS CYCLE DYNAMICS -- 8. Trends and Random Walks in Macroeconomic Time Series: A Reexamination -- 9. The Uncertain Unit Root in Real GNP -- 10. The Uncertain Unit Root in Real GNP: Comment -- 11. Long Memory and Persistence in Aggregate Output -- 12. Is Consumption Too Smooth? Long Memory and the Deaton Paradox -- 13. On the Power of Dickey-Fuller Tests against Fractional Alternatives -- PART IV: BUSINESS CYCLE FORECASTING -- 14. The Past, Present, and Future of Macroeconomic Forecasting -- 15. Scoring the Leading Indicators -- 16. Turning Point Prediction with the Composite Leading Index: An Ex Ante Analysis -- 17. Forecasting Output with the Composite Leading Index: A Real-Time Analysis -- 18. New and Old Models of Business Investment: A Comparison of Forecasting Performance -- 19. Comparing Predictive Accuracy -- Name Index -- Subject Index