Investment opportunity shifts, funding constraints, and business fluctuations

This modelling research explores the potential effects on business fluctuations of exogenous shifts in investment opportunities under financial constraints. To this end, this paper newly defines, within the framework of two-sector model, the concepts of ”level shock” and ”variation shock” of investment opportunities, both inherent in the capital-good producing sector. These shifts are orthogonal to the typical total factor productivity shock in the consumption-good producing sector, in the sense that the former may drive changes in investment through substitutions between consumption and investment in the absence of the latter. Impulse-response analyses reveal that investment opportunity shifts are clearly distinct from the usual productivity shifts concerning the business cycle effects. Both the redistribution of wealth between savers and investors and the constraints on outside funding seem to play important roles in the propagation of investment opportunity shifts. Also it is found that the effects of the shifts are more amplified and to become more persistent when the asymmetry in investment opportunities among entrepreneurs are more severe.