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This paper estimates UK capital adjustment costs, using manufacturing and service industry data for 1970–2000. There is evidence of significant adjustment costs, with a 1% increase in investment reducing value added by 0.05%. This implies an elasticity of investment with respect to Tobin's q of 2.5, and a convergence time for capital of 12 years. The results suggest that adjustment costs may have caused half of the slowdown in UK total factor productivity (TFP) growth during the second half of the 1990s. The impact is larger than that reported for the United States, reflecting larger adjustment costs and higher investment growth.

AbstractThis paper provides a geometric analysis of asset adjustment behavior in response to changes in expected return and wealth. The analysis permits discussion of the role of different adjustment cost and risk attitude assumptions within a unified framework. It is shown that changes in expected return generally induce portfolio revision only if the marginal rate of substitution between assets is less than their relative marginal costs of adjustment. Wealth disturbances may induce sequential, rather than simultaneous, asset adjustment if marginal adjustment costs are constant or decreasing and the investor is risk neutral.

Producción Científica ; Collective bargaining between a trade union and a firm is analyzed within the framework of a monopoly union model as a dynamic Stackelberg game. Adjustment costs for the firm are comprised of the standard symmetric convex costs plus a wage-dependent element. Indeed, hiring costs can turn into benefits assuming wage discrimination against new entrants. The union also bears increasing marginal costs in the number of layoff workers and decreasing marginal benefits in the number of new entrants. Starting from a baseline scenario with instantaneous adjustment, we characterize the conditions under which the adjustment costs for the firm, or for the union, lead to higher employment and lower wages or vice versa. More generally, these adjustment costs, when they affect both the union and the firm, are generally detrimental to employment. However, the standard symmetric element of the adjustment costs for the firm positively affects employment, even with lower wages. Finally, if hiring and firing costs are defined separately, then hiring and firing could take place simultaneously if the wage discrimination towards new entrants is strong, because the firm would agree to pay the costs of firing incumbent employees, in order to enjoy wage savings from new entrants. ; Spanish Government (projects ECO2014-52343-P and ECO2017-82227-P). Junta de Castilla y León VA024P17, co-financed by FEDER funds

In this paper we conduct a theoretical analysis of the implications of a union which can exploit the existence of firm labour adjustment costs. We consider a model involving a large number of identical firms facing a single, economy-wide union. We solve (i) for the Markov perfect equilibria with no commitment, under the assumption that the union chooses wages each period and firms react by choosing employment, and (ii) for the commitment equilibria where the union can precommit to the entire (infinite) sequence of wages. We conclude that the speed of adjustment of employment, that is higher in the nocommitment case, decreases with adjustment costs in both models. Moreover adjustment costs affect the long run values of employment and wages only in the no-commitment case, i.e., the higher the relevance of adjustment costs the higher the wage and therefore the smaller the level of employment in the long run. Commitment on the part of the union leads to lower wages, and moreover is beneficial to firms as well as to the union. Given that the union would like to commit to a lower path of wages we consider whether reputation building is desirable.