Financial Frictions, Investment and Tobin's Q

Guido Lorenzoni, Karl Walentin
2007 Social Science Research Network  
We develop a model of investment with financial constraints and use it to investigate the relation between investment and Tobin's q. A firm is financed partly by insiders, who control its assets, and partly by outside investors. When their wealth is scarce, insiders earn a rate of return higher than the market rate of return, i.e., they receive a quasirent on invested capital. This rent is priced into the value of the firm, so Tobin's q is driven by two forces: changes in the value of invested
more » ... apital, and changes in the value of the insiders' future rents per unit of capital. This weakens the correlation between q and investment, relative to the frictionlcss benchmark. We present a calibrated version of the model, which, due to this effect, generates realistic correlations between investment, q, and cash flow.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1022053 fatcat:wevoqkkeifdn7opyfdyeaml76e