Download or read book Essays in Corporate Investment, Financing, and Product Market Competition written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dissertation seeks to understand the importance of financial fictions and imperfect product market competition to corporate investment. It examines the ways in which competitive pressures in product markets, either from domestic or international rivals, affect a firm's investment and financing decisions. The dissertation first explores the empirical investment behavior of firms in the presence of imperfect product market competition and financial constraints. Firms with market power have incentive to overinvest to block potential rivals. As cash flow reflects the information about expected monopoly profits, the investment by firms with greater market power responds more to cash flow. But monopolists have a lower sensitivity of investment to cash flow than firms with medium market power. This is because cash flow compensates for the increased negative effect of monopoly rents on investment. Financial constraints can cause excess investment sensitivity to cash flow after accounting the effect of imperfect competition in product market. The dissertation also studies the interplay between globalization, product market competition, and corporate investment. Imports and foreign direct investment adversely affect domestic firms' market power, but the effect of imports is more pronounced. Firms with stronger market power cut more capital expenditures and increase less spending on R&D when they lose market power. Internal funds and market power show a complementary effect on corporate investment. Globalization appears linked to firms' abilities to get financing, as well as to their competitive product market positions and industry concentrations. Lastly, the dissertation connects globalization to the investment-cash flow sensitivity. The response of investment to cash flow increasingly declines with the impact of import competition on firms' market power. This is because intensified globalization reduces the market power of local U.S. manufacturing firms and the investment by firms with greater market power tends to depend more on the availability of internal funds. Beside through the channel of product market competition, the integration of global economy directly and negatively affects investment-cash flow sensitivity. Temporal globalization reversals are associated with the increase in the dependence of investment on cash flow.