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Working Paper Series

Investment, Cash Flow, and Sunk Costs
Paula R. Worthington

UN 0 8 199°
FEDERAL rtEStKv.
BANK OF CHICAGO

Working Papers Series
Macroeconomic Issues
Research Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
May 1993 (WP-93-4)

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FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
OF CHICAGO

Investment, Cash Flow, and Sunk Costs'

Paula R. Worthington

Abstract

This paper’s analysis of U.S. manufacturing industries confirms previous research showing
that cash flow and investment spending are positively correlated, even after controlling for
investment demand, and it makes two new points as well. First, I find that cash flow’s
impact is larger for durable goods industries than for nondurable goods industries. Second, I
find that cash flow’s impact is significantly larger in industries with high sunk costs than in
those with low sunk costs. The latter finding suggests that external financing of capital
investment is more difficult when the assets being financed are highly specific or are "sunk."

‘Previous versions of this paper were titled "Investment and Market Imperfections." I would
like to thank Bob Chirinko, Charlie Evans, Vivek Ghosal, Prakash Loungani, Carolyn
McMullen, Bruce Meyer, Bruce Petersen, Gordon Phillips, Steve Strongin, Dan Sullivan, and
seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Board of Governors, and
participants at the October 1992 Business Analysis Committee meeting held at the Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Any
remaining errors are m y own.




I. Introduction
Much recent research has been devoted to analyzing the sources and consequences of
imperfections in factor, product, and financial markets. For example, some researchers have
argued that financial capital market imperfections contribute to excessive investment volatility
and to suboptimal investment levels by certain classes of firms. Other researchers have
analyzed the influence of sunk costs on product market competition, developing models of
contestability, precommitment, and predation, while still others have focused on the
importance of asset specificity on firms’ financial structure. Yet another group of papers
investigates the effects of particular financial capital structures on input choices and the
intensity of subsequent product market competition.
This paper contributes to the literatures on capital market imperfections, investment,
and asset specificity (sunk costs) by analyzing the effects of two sunk cost proxies on an
industry’s investment sensitivity to movements in internal funds. Although many previous
researchers have documented and interpreted the positive correlation between cash flow and
investment, this paper differs by focusing on the role played by the assets whose purchase is
being financed, whether by internal or external funds. The idea is quite simple: if financial
capital markets are imperfect, then access to external funds to finance investment spending
should in part depend on the degree of asset specificity of the assets being purchased. In
turn, this implies that the sensitivity of investment spending to movements in internal funds,
or cash flow, will depend on the degree of sunk costs.
To test this hypothesis, I examined data for 270 four-digit Standard Industrial
Classification (SIC) manufacturing industries from 1963-1989 and found that the impact of
cash flow on investment spending was significantly larger in industries in which capital




2

e x p e n d itu r e s w e r e m o r e lik e ly to b e s u n k . I a ls o f o u n d la r g e r c a s h f lo w e f f e c t s fo r d u r a b le
g o o d s in d u s tr ie s th a n fo r n o n d u r a b le g o o d s in d u s tr ie s .
Section II briefly summarizes previous work on this topic, and Section HI describes
the data and empirical approach used here. Estimation results are in Section IV, and
discussion and conclusions are in the final section.

II. Capital market imperfections
A number of recent theoretical and empirical papers have analyzed the consequences
of imperfect capital markets for investment behavior.1 W h e n capital markets are perfect,
firms undertake any investment project with a positive net present value, and the choice of
financing mix is indeterminate.2 That is, a firm’s cost of capital is the same whether that
capital is raised internally through retained earnings, or externally through the issuance of
debt or equity. Market imperfections potentially arise from several sources, including
corporate tax deductibility of interest, scale economies in underwriting, and informational
asymmetries.
Many researchers have focused on capital market frictions due to informational
asymmetries, which arise when a firm’s credit worthiness is unobservable.3 In this situation,

‘See Fazzari, Hubbard, and Petersen (FHP; [1988]) for a review of the theoretical literature
and some empirical evidence. Hubbard [1990] also contains several papers on this topic.
2I ignore considerations based on an options-value approach to investment and the value to
waiting; see Pindyck [1991] for a discussion of that approach.

3A n y o b s e r v a b l e f i r m c h a r a c t e r i s t i c w h i c h i n c r e a s e s t h e r i s k i n e s s o f t h e f i r m w i l l b e r e f l e c t e d
in a n in c r e a s e in t h e f ir m ’s c o s t o f c a p ita l; p e r f e c t c a p it a l m a r k e ts d o n o t im p ly th a t a ll f ir m s
h a v e th e s a m e c o s t o f c a p ita l.




3

lenders cannot distinguish between low risk and high risk firms. To compensate for increased
average default risk due to pooling of high and low risk firms, lenders raise rates, causing
some or all of the better firms to leave the market. In extreme cases the lending market
disappears entirely, and firms cannot obtain external financing at all. As a result, these
information-driven imperfections can decrease the cost of internal funds relative to external
funds, so that a "financing hierarchy" can develop that favors retained earnings, followed by
debt, and, in turn, equity. Under these conditions, fixed investment spending will vary with
the availability of internal funds, not just the availability of positive net present value projects.
Researchers have explored these issues by identifying a priori those firms for which
informational problems are likely to be severe (and hence, the external funds premium is
likely to be large) and examining whether the investment-internal finance link is stronger for
those firms than for firms judged to suffer less from information-based problems.4 Previous
studies have grouped firms by size, age, dividend payout behavior, bond rating, and, for
Japanese firms, membership in keiretsu, or large industrial groups. These studies have
generally found support for the hypothesis of limited capital market access for certain groups
of firms. Although some researchers have expressed concerns about methodological
difficulties with interpreting the investment-cash flow relationship, several recent papers
indicate that the cash flow-investment correlation is truly robust and can be interpreted, at
least in part, as evidence that capital markets are imperfect and that internal funds are cheaper

4One recent paper (Oliner and Rudebusch [1992]) has actually studied the sources of the
external financing premium.




4
than external funds.5
There is much theoretical and empirical evidence that firms differ in their access to
external funds. For example, if lenders incur fixed costs when monitoring borrower behavior
or gathering information about potential or actual borrowers, then small firms may face higher
external funds premia than large firms, and in extreme cases they may be unable to obtain
external finance at all. Furthermore, small firms may face disadvantages since they tend to be
less diversified and younger than large firms. Young firms have not yet acquired reputations
as good credit risks and may be unable to issue external debt or equity. Some empirical
evidence supports these arguments, although firm size and age tend to decrease in importance
once other firm characteristics are taken into account.6
Other studies have used dividend payout behavior to group firms, arguing that firms
paying zero or low dividends are effectively revealing themselves to researchers as those who
suffer from information liquidity problems (FHP [1988], Fazzari and Petersen [1990],
Gilchrist and Himmelberg [1993], Mackie-Mason [1990]). Each study found that the
investment-cash flow connection is stronger for low or zero dividend payout firms than for
others.
One study (Whited [1991]) classifies firms according to whether their debt has been

5The problem is that a positive correlation between investment spending and cash flow need
not be interpreted as evidence that capital markets are imperfect; movements in current cash
flow may signal future movements in the marginal productivity of capital, so that investment
and cash flow would move together even in a Modigliani-Miller world. T w o recent papers
addressing this issue (Gilchrist and Himmelberg [1993] and Fazzari and Petersen [1990]) find
the robustness result mentioned in the text.

6S e e W h it e d [ 1 9 9 1 , 1 9 9 2 ] a n d G e r t le r a n d G ilc h r is t [ 1 9 9 3 ] . O n e s t u d y f in d s t h e r e v e r s e s i z e
r e la tio n s h ip ( D e v e r e u x a n d S c h ia n ta r e lli [ 1 9 9 0 ] ) .




5

rated by Moodys or not. Firms with credit ratings are "known quantities," and any
differences across firms in riskiness are known and presumably reflected in the rating and, in
turn, in the cost of capital. Firms with no ratings are essentially unknown, and informational
asymmetries are likely to be severe. Consistent with this argument, Whited finds that, for
firms in the latter category, investment spending is more sensitive to several balance sheet
items than it is for firms in the former group.
Hoshi, Kashyap, and Scharfstein [1990, 1991] studied the investment-financing
relationship for nonfinancial corporations in Japan, where a firm may be a member of a
keiretsu (industrial group) with strong ties to a "main bank." The authors found that the
investment spending of keiretsu members was less sensitive to movements in cash flow than
that of nonmembers. The authors infer that member firms do not face the information
problems of nonmembers, since members rely on a main bank for most of their financing
needs.
In this paper, I use a classification scheme based on the idea that the degree to which
capital expenditures are "sunk," hence unrecoverable in case of borrower financial distress,
will affect the informational asymmetries, hence capital market constraints, that face firms.
Industries in which sunk costs are high (relative to total capital or fixed costs) should thus
display greater investment sensitivity to internal finance movements than industries with low
sunk costs. Mayer [1990] makes the first point quite clearly when he argues that lenders will
be reluctant to finance acquisition of assets that are highly specific to their current
employment. Shleifer and Vishny [1992] develop a formal model showing that the
acquisition of sunk assets is likely to be hard to finance using debt. Empirical evidence on




6

this issue appears to be somewhat limited, although Zeckhauser and Pound [1990] present
some estimates of asset specificity for selected U.S. industries and argue that low asset
specificity makes an industry’s firms easy to monitor, thus less likely to face informational
problems than others.7
This paper uses two measures of the degree of asset specificity to group industries.8
First, I compute the share of used capital expenditures in total capital expenditures. A high
share implies that there is an active second-hand market for capital in that industry. It also
insures either that potential lenders have valuable collateral should borrowing firms default, or
that indebted firms in financial distress can sell assets relatively easily to other firms in the
industry. Second, I compute the ratio of total capital rental payments to the gross capital
stock.9 A high share indicates an active rental market, which implies that assets are easily
transferred between firms; this suggests that asset specificity, i.e., the extent of sunk capital
costs, is low. For both measures, I expect that in industries with high values, investment
spending will be less sensitive to cash flow movements than it is in industries with low
values.
7Petersen and Himmelberg [1990] exploited this argument as well in their study of the effects
of internal finance on R&D spending. Since R&D spending is really investment in a
noncollateralizable asset, information problems are likely to be severe, and internal funds
availability should explain much of the variation in R&D spending. See also Mackie-Mason
[1990] and Hall [1992] for related evidence on R&D and investment financing choices.
8Both are suggested by work of Kessides [1990], who used these two measures, along with
depreciation rates and other measures, to estimate the share of sunk costs in capital costs at
the industry level. See also Tirole’s [1988] discussion of resale and rental considerations and
sunk capital costs.
9Kessides [1990] defines the denominator to be the product of the interest rate and the gross
stock; since I do not have data on industry-specific interest rates, an aggregate interest rate
would alter only the level of this variable, not its cross-sectional variance.




7

Finally, I emphasize that the measures of asset specificity computed in this paper are
at the industry level, not firm level. While it is true that an industry-wide demand or cost
shock could eliminate overnight the second-hand and rental markets for an industry’s capital
(see especially Shleifer and Vishny [1992]), it is also true that industry-level risk is fairly
easily observable by lenders. Thus, potential creditors take into account the prospects of a
borrowing firm’s industry. It is unobservable firm-specific risk that can cause external
funding markets to demand premia or to collapse entirely. A lender’s ability to take
possession of a defaulting firm’s capital stock and to sell or rent it to others lessens the
"lemons" premium it will require of borrowing firms in that industry.

III. Empirical Approach and Data Description
I

model investment as a function of investment opportunities and cash flow.10

Previous researchers analyzing firm-level data have used Tobin’s q for the former, while
using various retained earnings measures for the latter. The Census data I use here cannot be
used to construct q-based measures, since q measures depend on firm-level valuations of
equity and debt, while the Census data pertain to manufacturing plants aggregated up to the
four-digit SIC industry. Studies using more aggregate data, e.g., two-digit SIC data, have
used sales or output measures in accelerator models to capture the impact of investment
opportunities on investment spending (Abel and Blanchard [1988]). One problem with using
sales (shipments) or output data in the present study is that these output measures are highly

10For example, FHP [1988] and Whited [1992] use this approach in their papers.




8

correlated with the cash flow measure I use.11 Consequently, I use alternative measures of
investment opportunities, or investment demand, as described below.

Let IK denote the gross investment rate, S the measure of investment opportunities and
CFK the ratio of cash flow to capital. Then the gross investment rate is written as:
(1) IK, = a + S £ + CFK„y + e* ,

where i and t refer to industry i and time t, respectively.*12 I try two alternative measures for
S to control for differences in industry investment opportunities. The first, denoted CU, is a
proxy for capacity utilization and is measured as hours per production worker.13 The idea is
that increases in this value denote intensive use of labor and signal increased demand for the
products sold by the industry. Short run increases in CU should be followed by increases in
investment spending. The second measure, denoted CUAGG, is the Federal Reserve Board
series on capacity utilization for the manufacturing sector. Both CU and CUAGG are highly
cyclical and strongly positively correlated with investment spending in the data.
The cash flow measure used in the numerator of the cash flow/capital ratio (CFK) is
defined as the difference between the value of shipments and all plant-level non-capital input

"Cantor [1990] notes this problem as well in his study of investment and leverage in U.S.
manufacturing firms.
12As is standard in the literature, both investment and cash flow are scaled by the beginning
of period capital stock.
"Abbott, Griliches, and Hausman use this measure as a capacity utilization proxy in their
[1989] paper. Alternative industry-based measures, such as the ratio of production worker
wages to total payroll, suggested by Lichtenberg [1988], performed similarly.




9

costs.14 This measure, then, overstates true cash flow by omitting capital and overhead
expenses. The capital stock measure is real total stock at the beginning of the period. I
expect the coefficient on CFK to be positive if capital markets are not perfect and the
coefficient’s size to vary systematically across different groups of industries, as explained
elsewhere in this paper.
I

estimate Equation (1) over several subsamples of industries. First, I divide the

sample into durable goods and nondurable goods producing industries.15 Next, I divide the
sample into groups based on the two sunk cost proxies: the intensities of rental and second
hand capital markets. Each of these proxies is computed using 1977 cross-sectional data.
Intensity of the rental market (SHRRENT) is measured as the ratio of industry rental
payments to the gross capital stock, and intensity of the market for used capital (SHRUSED)
is measured by the ratio of used capital expenditures to total capital expenditures. I present
estimates using both the median and the 75th percentile of the SHRRENT and SHRUSED
distributions to divide industries into groups.
The empirical approach is to measure all variables in logs so that the coefficients may
be interpreted as elasticities, and the right-hand side variables are lagged one period to limit
endogeneity problems. This paper uses fixed effects (FE) estimation procedures to estimate

14Petersen and Strauss [1991] use this measure and find that its correlation with investment
spending is quite strong. However, they do not control for other determinants of investment
spending in their analysis.
15Previous research has shown that durable and nondurable goods industries differ
significantly in their output and investment behavior; see Petersen and Strongin [1992].




10

(1), so that the intercept, a , is permitted to vary across industries.16 Preliminary analysis
suggested that serial correlation was a serious problem, so this paper presents estimates
correcting for first-order serial correlation. The first set of estimates (method 1) is based on
Kiefer’s [1980] suggestion of estimating the AR(1) parameter from the OLS residuals on the
mean-differenced data, using the estimate to quasi-difference the mean-differenced data, and
estimating the resulting equation using least squares. An alternative set of estimates (method
2) is derived by first-differencing the data, estimating the AR(1) parameter from the firstdifferenced data, and using least squares techniques on the quasi-differenced first-differenced
data.
The data used in the paper are derived from the Census of Manufactures and the
Annual Survey of Manufactures; a list of variables and definitions appears in Table I. The
final data set contains annual observations on 270 industries over the 1963-1989 period; fortytwo industries were eliminated from the original data set because of missing or poor quality
data. Lagging the right-hand side variables in Equation (1) led to a sample period of 19641989. Summary statistics for the full sample as well as the durable goods and nondurable
goods subsamples are presented in Table II.17

16An alternative approach, the random effects (RE) or error components technique, would be
appropriate if the effects are uncorrelated with other right-hand side variables. Preliminary
analysis indicated that a fixed effects approach was justified. Hausman tests soundly rejected
the null of no correlation between the industry effects and other explanatory variables.
17Table 13 indicates that the CFK measures are much larger than the IK measures; the C FK
measure overstates true cash flow , since it fails to deduct interest expenses and central office
(above the plant level) expenses.




11

[Tables I and II about here]

IV. Results
Tables III and IV, which contain the coefficient estimates obtained by estimating
Equation (1) for the full sample as well as for several subsamples, presents the principal
results of the paper. The demand measure in both Tables is CU, with Table in reporting the
results using AR(1) method 1 and Table IV those using AR(1) method 2. In each
specification, F-tests on the industry effects strongly rejected the null hypothesis of zero
effects. While the results of the two Tables are qualitatively similar, the statistical
significance is more pronounced with Table IV’s method 2 results. To streamline the
discussion, however, I will explicitly discuss only Table III.

[Tables III and IV about here]

Consider first the performance of the capacity utilization proxy, CU. The first row of
Table III reports an elasticity estimate of .640 for the full sample; CU enters positively and
significantly in most of the subsamples, with its fit for durables industries a bit better than
that for nondurables industries. Overall, the CU variable seems to perform reasonably
well.18

18Tables All and AIII in the Appendix present estimates using the aggregate capacity variable,
CUAGG, in lieu of the industry-based CU measure, and Table AIV contains the associated t
statistics. The results are qualitatively similar to those of Tables I13-V and will not be
discussed further.




12

Now turn to the cash flow elasticities presented in Table III. For the full sample, the
elasticity estimate is .121, positive and significant as other researchers have found, and
consistent with the hypothesis of imperfect capital markets. Following arguments similar to
FHP [1988] and others, however, I wish to emphasize the differences in coefficient estimates
across groups of industries rather than the levels of those coefficient estimates. The
elasticities for durable goods industries are higher than those for nondurable goods industries,
consistent with previous research (Petersen and Strauss [1991], Petersen and Strongin [1992]);
F-tests strongly reject pooling of durables and nondurables industries. Shleifer and Vishny’s
[1992] model provides some explanation of this finding: in the model, firms in highly
cyclical industries are more likely to find that their physical assets cannot be easily sold to
other firms in the industry, since all firms are likely to face financial distress and limited
capital availability simultaneously. Thus, internal funds will be more important to firms in
cyclical industries than in noncyclical industries.
Now consider the results when industries are grouped according to their rental and
second-hand capital markets. As predicted, industries with active second-hand markets (high
values of SHRUSED) and rental markets (high values of SHRRENT) have lower cash flow
elasticities; many of the differences are statistically significant (see Table V, which contains
the t-statistics on the sunk cost dummies-cash flow coefficients), and many are sizeable as
well, with the differences exceeding 50% or more. For example, when the full sample is
divided (using the 75th percentile) into "high rent" and "low rent" industries, Table HI
indicates that investment’s elasticity with respect to cash flow is .154 for the low rent sample
and only .063 for the high rent sample; the difference is significant at the 1% level.




13

Similarly, industries with SHRUSED values above the median have smaller cash flow
elasticities than those with lower SHRUSED values; the difference is significant at the 5%
level for the full sample.19 In general, these results hold up when the sample is split
between durable and nondurable goods industries, with the results for durable goods industries
being somewhat stronger than those for nondurable goods industries.

[Table V about here]

V. Discussion and Conclusions
This paper has found that cash flow measures enter industry level investment
equations positively and significantly, even after investment opportunities are taken into
account. The effect of cash flow is greater in durable goods industries than in nondurable
goods industries. Furthermore, the impact of cash flow on investment is larger in industries
whose capital expenditures are likely to be highly "sunk" than in low sunk-cost industries. I
interpret this last finding as evidence that external financing of capital investment is more
difficult when the assets being financed have low recovery (resale) values or are sunk.
These results suggest that sunk costs, or asset specificity, can affect the severity and
impact of financial capital market imperfections. Future empirical work using both industry
and firm level data is needed to sort out the relative importance of firm, industry, and asset
characteristics on firms’ investment and financing choices. Furthermore, more research is

19There is no reason a priori to expect that the threshold percentiles of the SHRRENT and
SHRUSED distributions are the same. The results indicate that the 75th percentile cut-off
works well for the rental variable, while the median works well for the used variable.




14

needed to identify potential spillovers between financial capital market and other market
imperfections. For example, ample theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that sunk
costs influence the intensity of product market competition; combining this insight with the
one relating sunk costs to financial market imperfections leaves one with a rich variety of
explanations for firm behavior.
One example of the possible connections between the sunk costs-product market
competition literature and the sunk costs-financial markets literature is the following.
Industrial organization economists have shown that precommitment has value to "firstmovers" in noncooperative settings, where firms precommit to physical capacity, financial
capital structure, or some other irreversible item. Yet this paper and others suggest that sunk
or precommitted physical capital is exactly the sort of asset that would be difficult to finance
using external funds (debt). Thus, committing to a high debt level may not be that effective
or credible, since the asset or activity being financed is not sunk and has value to others
should the borrowing firm face financial distress. In conclusion, more study is needed to
explore fully the nature of "sunkenness" and its implications for the workings of input, output,
and financial markets.

Paula R. Worthington
Economic Research Department
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
230 South LaSalle Street
Chicago, Illinois 60604
(312) 322-5802




15
Table I List of Variable Definitions
Label

Definition

gross investment rate

IK

total investment in current year/capital stock at end of
previous year

industry demand

CU

production worker hours/production workers

capacity utilization

CUAGG

capacity utilization rate, manufacturing sector [from Federal
Reserve Board]

cash flow/capital ratio

CFK

((value of shipments - total payroll - cost of
materials)/shipments price deflator)/real capital stock

rental payments relative
to capital stock

SHRRENT

rental payments for capital/gross book value of capital stock

share of used capital
expenditures

SHRUSED

spending on used capital plant and equipment/(spending on
new + spending on used plant and equipment)

Name
Panel variables

Cross-sectional variables







16
Table II Summary Statistics

Panel variables

1963-1989

Total

Durables

Nondurables

Mean (Std)

Mean (Std)

Mean (Std)

IK

.082
(.040)

.084
(.041)

.080
(.039)

CU

.922
(.054)

.926
(.047)

.918
(.062)

CUAGG

.824
(.046)

.824
(.046)

.824
(.046)

1.242
(1.014)

1.116
(.720)

1.387
(1.256)

CFK

Cross-sectional
1977

variables,

SHRRENT

mean

.034

.028

.040

median

.024

.024

.024

75th perc.

.038

.034

.048

mean

.091

.090

.091

median

.074

.075

.072

75th perc.

.124

.074

.124

SHRUSED

Total

Durables

Nondurables

17
Table III Regression Results: AR(1) method 1 specification
Dependent Variable IK, 1964-1989

high rent
(median)

all
all
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

high used
(median)

low used
(median)

cu

.640’
(.097)

.625s
(.138)

.631s
(.135)

.549s
(.139)

.707s
(.134)

CFK

.121*
(.016)

.100s
(.023)

.147s
(.023)

.089s
(.023)

.153s
(.023)

CU

.925“
(.142)

,832s
(.189)

1.041s
(.212)

.775s
(.186)

1.088s
(.217)

CFK

,144s
(.023)

.135s
(.032)

.144s
(.032)

.102s
(.032)

.183s
(.032)

CU

.414s
(.133)

.454b
(.201)

.368b
(.174)

.289
(.210)

.486s
(.174)

CFK

.099s
(.023)

.073b
(.031)

.139s
(.033)

.076b
(.033)

.127s
(.032)

high rent
(75th
percentile)

all

all
industries

low rent
(median)

low rent
(75th
percentile)

high used
(75th
percentile)

low used
(75th
percentile)

CU

,640s
(.097)

,641s
(.202)

,586s
(.108)

,735s
(.206)

.613s
(.109)

CFK

.121s
(.016)

.063b
(.029)

.154s
(.019)

.087b
(.034)

.131s
(.018)

CU

.925s
(.142)

,545b
(.262)

,994s
(.166)

.950s
(.274)

.913s
(.166)

CFK

,144s
(.023)

.062
(.039)

.175s
(.027)

.104b
(.049)

,156s
(.025)

CU

,414s
(.133)

.726b
(.296)

.275'
(.141)

.430
(.313)

.412s
(.148)

CFK

,099s
(.023)

.064
(.042)

,126s
(.027)

.070
(.047)

.108s
(.026)

Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses under coefficient estimates, and all regressions include industry
dummies (not reported). All variables are in logs, and the right hand side variables are lagged once.
Coefficients marked with superscripts a, b, or c are statistically significant at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level,
respectively.




Table IV Regression Results: AR(1) method 2 specification
Dependent Variable IK, 1964-1989

high rent
(median)

all
all
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

high used
(median)

low used
(median)

CU

.418"
(.095)

.377*
(.137)

.452*
(.133)

.287b
(.140)

.529“
(.131)

CF

.328“
(.022)

.236“
(.034)

.394“
(.029)

.270“
(.032)

.381“
(.031)

CU

.616“
(.143)

.624“
U91)

.539b
(.213)

.445b
(.188)

.824*
(.218)

CFK

.400“
(.030)

.272“
(.045)

.495“
(.041)

.287“
(.043)

.504“
(.043)

CU

.240c
(.130)

.158
(.196)

.311“
(.171)

.105
(.208)

.304“
(.167)

CFK

.247“
(.033)

.188“
(.052)

.288“
(.042)

.250“
(.048)

.249“
(.045)

high rent
(75th
percentile)

all

all
industries

low rent
(median)

low rent
(75th
percentile)

high used
(75th
percentile)

low used
(75th
percentile)

CU

.418“
(.095)

.376c
(.203)

.419“
(.107)

.261
(.205)

.463“
(.108)

CFK

.328“
(.022)

.193“
(.053)

.364“
(.024)

.283“
(.044)

.344“
(.026)

CU

.616“
(.143)

.481“
(.272)

.639“
(.168)

.439
(.273)

.695“
(.168)

CFK

.400“
(.030)

.191“
(.072)

.442“
(.034)

.344*
(.064)

.417“
(.034)

CU

,240c
(.130)

.297
(.290)

.212
(.139)

-.019
(.312)

.286b
(.144)

CFK

.247*
(.033)

.190b
(.074)

.265“
(.035)

.225“
(.061)

.257“
(.039)

Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses under coefficient estimates, and all regressions include industry
dummies (not reported). All variables are in logs, and the right hand side variables are lagged once.
Coefficients marked with superscripts a, b, or c are statistically significant at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level,
respectively.




19
Table V T-statistics on the Cash Flow-Sunk Cost Interaction Variables

Specification:

Table III

medians

all industries

Used

-1.42

-2.06b

-.28

-1.85c

nondurables

-1.50

-1.13

all industries

-2.85a

-1.18

durables

-2.34b

-.98

nondurables

-1.56

-.71

durables

75th percentile

Rent

Specification:

Table IV

medians

all industries

-3.36a

-2.29b

durables

-2.79a

-3.58a

nondurables

-1.91c

.25

all industries

-3.43a

-1.46

durables

-3.10“

-1.43

nondurables

-1.29

-.50

75th percentile

Rent

Used

Superscripts a, b, or c denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level, respectively.




20

Appendix
The industry data used in this paper are from various years of the Census of
Manufactures (CM) and the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM), both conducted by the
Commerce Department’s Bureau of the Census. The CM is conducted every several years
and is based on information collected from every manufacturing establishment in SIC
industries 2000-3999. The ASM is conducted annually and is based on only a sample of
these establishments. The ASM data is then "scaled up" to give the total data for each
industry. This paper’s data are compiled from a version of this data prepared by Domowitz,
Hubbard, and Petersen [1987] and later updated by William Strauss at the Federal Reserve
Bank of Chicago. This dataset uses the 1958 industry definitions. The price deflators and
capital stocks were provided by Wayne Gray, and the rest of the variables are from CM and
ASM, unless otherwise noted.







21
Table AI Sample Sizes
Total

Durables

Nondurables

270

145

125

High rent

68

29

39

Low rent

202

116

86

High used

67

36

31

Low used

203

109

94

All

22

Table All Regression Results: AR(1) method 1specification
Dependent Variable IK, 1964-1989
high rent
(median)

all
all
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

high used
(median)

low used
(median)

CUAGG

1.370*
(.087)

1.200*
(.123)

1.524*
(.124)

1.397*
(.120)

1.341*
(.126)

CF

.146*
(.016)

.132“
(.022)

.161*
(.022)

.112’
(.022)

.180*
(.022)

CUAGG

1.698*
(.114)

1.461*
(.156)

1.956*
(.166)

1.665*
(.157)

1.730*
(.166)

CFK

.161“
(.022)

.154*
(.031)

.157“
(.030)

.116“
(.031)

.203“
(.030)

CUAGG

.973*
(.135)

.901*
(.194)

1.039*
(.185)

1.052*
(.187)

.896*
(.193)

CFK

.125*
(.023)

.106*
(.031)

.154*
(.032)

.100*
(.032)

.151*
(.032)

all

all
industries

low rent
(median)

high rent
(75th
percentile)

low rent
(75th
percentile)

high used
(75th
percentile)

low used
(75th
percentile)

C UAGG

1.370*
(.087)

.866“
(.189)

1.502*
(.098)

1.450*
(.173)

1.341“
(.101)

CFK

.146*
(.016)

.092“
(.030)

.169*
(.018)

.107“
(.033)

.158’
(.018)

CUAGG

1.698*
(.114)

.946“
(.247)

1.855*
(.128)

1.817*
(.241)

1.664’
(.130)

CFK

.161*
(.022)

.088b
(.039)

.184*
(.025)

.108b
(.047)

.176’
(.024)

CUAGG

.973*
(.135)

.810*
(.273)

1.011*
(.150)

1.037*
(.249)

.949*
(-159)

CFK

.125*
(.023)

.093b
(.043)

.144*
(.026)

.095b
(.045)

.134*
(.026)

Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses under coefficient estimates, and all regressions include industry
dummies (not reported). All variables are in logs, and the right hand side variables are lagged once.
Coefficients marked with superscripts a, b, or c are statistically significant at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level,
respectively.




23

Table AIII Regression Results: AR(1) method 2 specification
Dependent Variable IK, 1964-1989

high rent
(median)

all
all
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

durables
industries

nondurables
industries

high used
(median)

low used
(median)

C UAGG

1.028’
(.079)

.947’
(•111)

1.099’
(.113)

1.119’
(.110)

.944’
(.114)

CF

.291’
(.022)

.208’
(.034)

.350’
(.029)

.224*
(.032)

.351’
(.031)

C UAGG

1.369’
(.106)

1.318’
(.146)

1.400*
(.154)

1.514’
(.144)

1.221’
(.155)

CFK

.322’
(.030)

.204’
(.045)

.408’
(.041)

.195’
(.043)

.445’
(.043)

CUAGG

.611*
(.120)

.509’
(.170)

.716’
(.169)

.664’
(.170)

.556’
(.169)

CFK

.239’
(.033)

.185’
(.052)

.274’
(.042)

.238’
(.048)

.242’
(.045)

high rent
(75th
percentile)

all

all
industries

low rent
(median)

low rent
(75th
percentile)

high used
(75th
percentile)

low used
(75th
percentile)

C UAGG

1.028’
(.079)

.618’
(.172)

1.160*
(.089)

1.135’
(.154)

.996’
(.092)

CFK

.291’
(.022)

.178’
(.053)

.318’
(.024)

.237’
(.044)

.308’
(.026)

CUAGG

1.369’
(.106)

.888’
(.236)

1.490*
(.118)

1.564’
(.220)

1.313’
(.121)

CFK

.322’
(.030)

.136c
(.073)

.359’
(.033)

.225’
(.065)

.351’
(.034)

CUAGG

.611’
(.120)

,435c
(.245)

.690’
(.134)

.657’
(.219)

.598’
(.142)

CFK

.239’
(.033)

.192’
(.074)

.253’
(.035)

.218’
(.060)

.246’
(.039)

Notes: Standard errors are in parentheses under coefficient estimates, and all regressions include industry
dummies (not reported). All variables are in logs, and the right hand side variables are lagged once.
Coefficients marked with superscripts a, b, or c are statistically significant at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level,
respectively.




24
Table AIV T-statistics on the Cash Flow-Sunk Cost Interaction Variables

Specification:

Table All

medians

all industries

Used

-1.05

-2.04b

.13

-1^9*

nondurables

-1.41

-1.03

all industries

-2.92“

-1.28

durables

-2.36b

-1.23

nondurables

-1.59

-.67

durables

75th percentile

Rent

Specification:

Table AIII

medians

all industries

-2.99“

-2.76“

durables

-2.46"

-4.27“

nondurables

-1.77c

.14

all industries

-2.83a

-1.74c

durables

-2.69“

-2.17b

nondurables

-1.11

-.49

75th percentile

Rent

Used

Superscripts a, b, or c denote statistical significance at the 1%, 5%, or 10% level, respectively.




25

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