Financial Liberalization, Private Investment and Portfolio Choice: Financialization of Real Sectors in Emerging Markets

Demir, Firat (2008): Financial Liberalization, Private Investment and Portfolio Choice: Financialization of Real Sectors in Emerging Markets. Forthcoming in: Journal of Development Economics

Abstract

Using firm level panel data, we analyze the impacts of rates of return gap between financial and fixed investments under uncertainty on real investment performance in three emerging markets, Argentina, Mexico and Turkey. Employing a portfolio choice model to explain the low fixed investment rates in developing countries during the 1990s, we suggest that rather than investing in irreversible long term fixed investments, firms may choose to invest in reversible short term financial investments depending on respective rates of returns and the overall uncertainty in the economy. The empirical results show that increasing rates of return gap and uncertainty have an economically and statistically significant fixed investment reducing effect while the opposite is true with respect to financial investments.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Institution: University of Oklahoma
• Language: English
• Keywords: Private Investment; Portfolio Choice; Uncertainty; Financialization
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C3 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models ; Multiple Variables > C33 - Panel Data Models ; Spatio-temporal Models; D - Microeconomics > D2 - Production and Organizations > D21 - Firm Behavior: Theory; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O16 - Financial Markets ; Saving and Capital Investment ; Corporate Finance and Governance; G - Financial Economics > G1 - General Financial Markets > G11 - Portfolio Choice ; Investment Decisions; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy > E22 - Investment ; Capital ; Intangible Capital ; Capacity

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