Long-run Investment under Uncertain Demand
27.06.2013
Luca Di Corato, Michele Moretto, Sergio Vergalli
C61, D92, E22
Investment, Demand Uncertainty, Irreversibility
Economy and Society
In the literature investigating the impact of uncertainty on short-run and long-run investment, most authors have used a log linear profit function. This functional form has been generally considered a reasonable approximation for more general ones and has the advantage of providing closed form solutions for both short-run investment rule and long-run rate of capital accumulation. In this paper, we consider a firm facing a linear demand function with additive shocks and present a technique for the analytical approximation of the long-run average rate of capital accumulation for the case of an inverted U-shape profit function. We then compare the long-run rates of capital accumulation calculated under both assumptions within a plausible range of parameter values. We notice significant differences and conclude that the choice of a log linear functional form has a non-trivial impact on the magnitude of the long run rate of capital accumulation.