We know that firms use cycle testing to identify marginal cost of capital, and to identify the firm’s potentials for growth. However, most firms do not routinely test for cycle reliability, especially in the commercial space. The purpose of this paper is to describe the tellativeness of short selling on identifying inefficient short positions, how brokerage firms adjust their short position prior to the release of a quarterly business report, and how short selling firms use their own information advantage to facilitate company investment inefficiencies. Finally, I will suggest several measures that can be taken by firms to improve their cycle reliability.
Cycle reliability is a functional challenge based on economic theory. According to this view, firms should anticipate a reduction in stock price as a result of government intervention. If there are negative shocks to value at the onset of the stimulus package, firms should anticipate negative price increases in stock from then until the end of the crisis period. Since the Crowth Fund was created in January 2021, it is quite possible that government intervention pushed up share prices above the reasonable range prior to the crisis period. This paper examines the implications of this phenomenon for firm investment decisions.
The existence of the Crowth Fund and other unconventional government interventions are important for the analysis of firm investment decisions. However, there are some limitations to this approach. These include imperfect knowledge of the economic stimulus package, varying estimates of the impact of the package on firms, and the time period over which the effects are likely to occur. To address these issues, we draw on two alternative models. One of these models exploits the fact that firms react to shocks to firm value in terms of their capital structure rather than their balance sheet, leading to an estimation of the effect of the economic stimulus package on capital assets without the use of the Crowth Fund framework.
By fitting a lagging effect model on capital stocks, we show that the economic stimulus program had a significant effect on firms’ net worth at the beginning of the policy period. Specifically, we examine the effects of the fiscal stimulus package on equity, retained earnings, retained cash, and market value of fixed assets. Our results suggest that the fiscal policy had a sizable effect on equity values and retained earnings. The fiscal policy also had a large effect on market value of equities. Our estimate of the effect of the fiscal stimulus program on fixed assets is based on a moderate level of depreciation and a low rate of expansion. While we present a complete description of our results at the national level, our analysis is not detailed enough to determine the effects of the fiscal stimulus program on individual firms at the local level.
In addition to examining the effect of the fiscal policy on firms’ investment decisions, we must also examine the effects of the policy on firms’ domestic activities. To do this, we use the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) to track fluctuations in the extent of market confidence regarding the health of domestic funds. The PMI indicates the extent to which financial resources are thought to be available by a firm for conducting business. We construct a regression that links the extent of market confidence to measures of financial risk and firm size.
We then apply standard errors to estimates of the effect of the fiscal stimulus on firm investments. Our main results imply that the fiscal stimulus increased financial resource availability and improved market confidence. The increase in available resources was mostly associated with changes in the level of government debt and hence to a certain extent, the improvements in market confidence were related to changes in the amount of government debt. However, the effect on firm investment efficiency was mainly through increases in total asset value. Finally, our analysis indicates that the effect of government intervention on firms’ investments is likely to have a positive effect on long run economic growth.
