The impact of uncertainty on investment plans

In this paper we investigate how demand and output price uncertainty affect investment plans of Belgian manufacturing firms. We obtain time-varying uncertainty measures at the firm and industry level from the Belgian monthly business cycle survey and investment plans from the half-yearly investment survey. Using investment plans instead of realised investment data, e.g. annual accounts data, is, from an informative point of view, superior since it is more likely to reveal the features of the decision formation process and, therefore, it is most closely related to economic theory. Business inve... Mehr ...