Financially constrained capital investments: The effects of disembodied and embodied technological progress

Abstract

Empirical studies stress the significance of financing constraints in business investment. Especially high tech investment is likely to be affected by capital market imperfections. The reason is that their returns are highly uncertain so that it is difficult to get outside finance for this kind of investment. This paper studies the combined effect of technological progress and the capital market being imperfect on the firm's investment behavior. We show that it is crucial to make a distinction between embodied and disembodied technological progress. Embodied technological progress affects only the capital goods built after the technological breakthrough while disembodied technological progress influences the productivity of all capital goods installed. It is shown that where disembodied technological progress leads to a positive anticipation phase before the technological breakthrough occurs, a negative anticipation phase will occur before an embodied technological breakthrough. During this negative anticipation phase the firm builds up a stock of liquid financial assets in order to be able to finance increased investments in the improved capital goods from after the technological breakthrough.