Investment and Sales: Some Empirical Evidence

This paper attempts to give a structural interpretation to the distributed lag of sales on investment at the two-digit level in US manufacturing. It first presents a simple model which captures the various sources of lags and their respective implications. It then estimates the model, using both data on investment and sales as well as direct evidence on the sources of lags. The spirit of the paper is exploratory ; the model is used mainly as a vehicle to construct, present and interpret the data. We find that the following model can roughly generate the distributed lag structure found in the data. Firms face delivery lags of 3 quarters. They also face adjustment costs, which lead them to take into account expected future sales, with discount factor -9 when constructing the desired capital stock, and to close about 5% of the gap between actual and desired capital per quarter. They pay for orders at a constant rate between the time of order and that of delivery. The model is however not very successful in explaining differences in dynamics across sectors.

An Intertemporal Model of Saving and Investment

The standard model of optimal growth, interpreted as a model of a market economy with infinitely long-lived agents, does not allow separation of the savings decisions of agents from the investment decisions of firms. Investment is essentially passive: the "one good" assumption leads to a perfectly elastic investment supply; the absence of installation costs for investment leads to a perfectly elastic investment demand. On the other hand, the standard model of temporary equilibrium used in macroeconomics characterizes both the savings-consumption decision and the investment decision, or, equivalently, derives a well-behaved aggregate demand which, in equilibrium, must be equal to aggregate supply. Often, however, we want to study the movement of the temporary equilibrium over time in response to a particular shock or policy. The discrepancy between the treatment of investment in the two models makes imbedding the temporary equilibrium model in the growth model difficult. This paper characterizes the dynamic behavior of the optimal growth model with adjustment costs. It shows the similarity between the temporary equilibrium of the corresponding market economy and the short-run equilibrium of standard macroeconomic models: consumption depends on wealth, investment on Tobin's q. Equilibrium is maintained by the endogenous adjustment of the term structure of interest rates. It then shows how the equivalence can be used to study the dynamic effects of policies; it considers various fiscal policies and exploits their equivalence to technological shifts in the optimal growth problem.

Experimental Combat-Stress Model in Rats: Histological Examination of Effects of Amelogenesis-A Possible Measure of Diminished Vagal Tone Episodes

Developmental defects of enamel-stress histomarker rings (accentuated striae) may be a potential measure of diminished vagal tone in research on extreme stress such as exposure to combat. To develop an animal model of this measure, we examined the enamel of rat incisors which erupt continuously. We examined incisors from 15 stressed-colony rats and 7 control-rats for these histomarkers using the Visible Burrow System (VBS). VBS was developed to study combat stress in rats. No stress rings were found in any of the rat incisors examined. In contrast to humans, rats have likely evolved to prioritize incisor strength during combat stress. Studies of amelogenesis during combat stress in other rodents with continuously growing incisors are warranted. Laboratory animals such as rabbits or marmosets may be especially suitable, since they less frequently use their incisors for self defense

Carry-Along Trade.

New empirical and theoretical work has highlighted the importance of multi-product fi…rms in international trade flows. We examine multi-product exporters in the small open economy of Belgium. Linking production and export data at the fi…rm-product level, we discover new and, heretofore, unknown facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters. The large majority of Belgian manufacturing …firms export products that they do not produce. More than three quarters of the exported products and more than one quarter of export value from Belgian manufacturers are in goods that are not produced by the …rm, so-called Carry-Along Trade (CAT). CAT exports are concentrated in the largest and most productive …rms and CAT exports respond di¤erently to variation in …rm productivity and size than do exports of goods that the …rm produces.

The Present Value of Profits and Cyclical Movements in Investment

Most of the empirical work on investment is based on the existence of a relation between investment and the expected present val of marginal profits.Thus, in this paper we compute such a present value series, under various assumptions about demand and technology and examine its relation to investment.We find that variations in this present value series are, surprisingly,due more to variations in the cost of capital than to variations in marginal profit. We also find that the present value series, although significantly related to investment, still leaves unexplained a large, serially correlated fraction of investment

An Intertemporal Model of Saving and Investment

The standard model of optimal growth, interpreted as a model of a market economy with infinitely long-lived agents, does not allow separation of the savings decisions of agents from the investment decisions of firms. Investment is essentially passive: the one good assumption leads to a perfectly elastic investment supply; the absence of installation costs for investment leads to a perfectly elastic investment demand. On the other hand, the standard model of temporary equilibrium used in macroeconomics characterizes both the savings-consumption decision and the investment decision, or, equivalently, derives a well-behaved aggregate demand which, in equilibrium, must be equal to aggregate supply. Often, however, we want to study the movement of the temporary equilibrium over time in response to a particular shock or policy. The discrepancy between the treatment of investment in the two models makes imbedding the temporary equilibrium model in the growth model difficult. This paper characterizes the dynamic behavior of the optimal growth model with adjustment costs. It shows the similarity between the temporary equilibrium of the corresponding market economy and the short-run equilibrium of standard macroeconomic models: consumption depends on wealth, investment on Tobin\u27s q. Equilibrium is maintained by the endogenous adjustment of the term structure of interest rates. It then shows how the equivalence can be used to study the dynamic effects of policies; it considers various fiscal policies and exploits their equivalence to technological shifts in the optimal growth problem

Investment and Sales: Some Empirical Evidence

This paper attempts to give a structural interpretation to the distributed lag of sales on investment at the two-digit level in US manufacturing. It first presents a simple model which captures the various sources of lags and their respective implications. It then estimates the model, using both data on investment and sales as well as direct evidence on the sources of lags. The spirit of the paper is exploratory ; the model is used mainly as a vehicle to construct, present and interpret the data. We find that the following model can roughly generate the distributed lag structure found in the data. Firms face delivery lags of 3 quarters. They also face adjustment costs, which lead them to take into account expected future sales, with discount factor -9 when constructing the desired capital stock, and to close about 5% of the gap between actual and desired capital per quarter. They pay for orders at a constant rate between the time of order and that of delivery. The model is however not very successful in explaining differences in dynamics across sectors

The clinical and cost-effectiveness of a Victim Improvement Package (VIP) for the reduction of chronic symptoms of depression or anxiety in older victims of common crime (the VIP trial): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Older people are vulnerable to sustained high levels of psychosocial distress following a crime. A cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-informed psychological therapy, the Victim Improvement Package (VIP) may aid recovery. The VIP trial aims to test the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the VIP for alleviating depressive and anxiety symptoms in older victims of crime. METHODS/DESIGN: People aged 65 years or more who report being a victim of crime will be screened by Metropolitan Police Service Safer Neighbourhood Teams within a month of the crime for distress using the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-2. Those who screen positive will be signposted to their GP for assistance, and re-screened at 3 months. Participants who screen positive for depression and/or anxiety at re-screening are randomised to a CBT informed VIP added to treatment as usual (TAU) compared to TAU alone. The intervention consists of 10 individual 1-h sessions, delivered weekly by therapists from the mental health charity Mind. The primary outcome measure is the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), used as a composite measure, assessed at 6 months after the crime (post therapy) with a 9-month post-crime follow-up. Secondary outcome measures include the EQ-5D, and a modified Client Service Receipt Inventory. A total of 226 participants will be randomised VIP:TAU with a ratio 1:1, in order to detect a standardised difference of at least 0.5 between groups, using a mixed-effects linear-regression model with 90% power and a 5% significance level (adjusting for therapist clustering and potential drop-out). A cost-effectiveness analysis will incorporate intervention costs to compare overall health care costs and quality of life years between treatment arms. An embedded study will examine the impact of past trauma and engagement in safety behaviours and distress on the main outcomes. DISCUSSION: This trial should provide data on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a CBT-informed psychological therapy for older victims of crime with anxiety and/or depressive symptoms and should demonstrate a model of integrated cross-agency working. Our findings should provide evidence for policy-makers, commissioners and clinicians responding to the needs of older victims of crime. TRIAL REGISTRATION: International Standard Randomised Controlled Trials Number, ID: ISRCTN16929670. Registered on 3 August 2016