The Insensitivity of Investment to Interest Rates:

Evidence from a Survey of CFOs

December 3, 2013

Abstract
A fundamental tenet of investment theory and the traditional theory of monetary policy
transmission is that investment expenditures by businesses are negatively affected by
interest rates. Yet, a large body of empirical research offer mixed evidence, at best, for a
substantial interest-rate effect on investment. In this paper, we examine the sensitivity of
investment plans to interest rates using a set of special questions asked of CFOs in the
Global Business Outlook Survey conducted in the third quarter of 2012. Among the
more than 500 responses to the special questions, we find that most firms claim to be
quite insensitive to decreases in interest rates, and only mildly more responsive to interest
rate increases. Most CFOs cited ample cash or the low level of interest rates, as
explanations for their own insensitivity. We also find that sensitivity to interest rate
changes tends to be lower among firms that do not report being concerned about working
capital management as well as those that do not expect to borrow over the coming year.
Perhaps more surprisingly, we find that investment is also less interest sensitive among
firms expecting greater revenue growth. These findings seem to be corroborated by a
cursory meta-analysis of average hurdle rates drawn from firm-level surveys at different
times over the past 30 years, which exhibit no apparent relation to market interest rates.
JEL codes: E22, E52, G31
Keywords: Investment, interest rates, hurdle rates

1. Introduction
A fundamental tenet of investment theory and the traditional view of monetary policy
transmission is that a rise in interest rates has a sizable negative effect on capital
expenditures by businesses. In particular, the market interest rate is considered to be a
key building block in the firms user cost of capital, which, combined with the resulting
stream of expected cash flows, constitute the primary determinants of whether and how
much to invest. Yet, a large body of empirical research offer mixed evidence, at best, for
a substantial interest-rate effect on investment.1
Much of that research is focused on measuring the elasticity of investment with
respect to the all-in user cost of capital, from which one can back out the implied interestrate elasticity. In the earlier studies, the effects of changes in the user cost of capital on
investment estimated from time-series data tend to be surprisingly small in the short- to
medium-term (Chirinko, 1993). More recent time series studies that focus on estimating
the long-run elasticity of investment to the all-in user cost tend to find larger user-cost
effects, which are more in line with standard theory (Caballero, 1994; Schaller, 2006).
Regardless of horizon, though, interest rate elasticities backed out from most
empirical studies are predicated on the restrictions imposed by the user cost formula.
Indeed, the few attempts to separately estimate elasticities for each component of user
cost generally find no negative effect associated with the interest rate component of user
cost, and relatively sizable effects from the other user cost components (Tevlin and
Whelan, 2003; Schaller, 2007). Simultaneity bias from unobservable shifts in investment
demand are widely presumed to be the culprit behind the lack of a negative interest rate
coefficient, but an alternative explanation could be that the required rate of return used
for investment decisions is not closely connected to recent interest rates, whereas other
components of user cost are more accurately measured. 2

See Caballero (1999) for an overview of the literature.

A very recent exception is Kothari, Lewellen, and Warner (2012), who estimate reduced-form aggregate
investment regressions as a function of interest rates.

Studies using microeconomic data, particularly when combined with natural

experiments, generally find larger user-cost effects than aggregate studies. Here again
though, empirical tests mostly focus on estimating implied interest-rate effects under the
constraints assumed within the user cost formula; so results could be driven by the noninterest rate components. Indeed, Cummins, Hassett, and Hubbard (1994), one of the
most commonly cited microeconomic studies, find that all-in user cost elasticity estimates
are largely unaffected if the firm-level measures of required return employed in the usercost formula are replaced with a fixed 4% real required rate of return.3
Our study offers a very different approach to measuring the interest-rate sensitivity of
investment. It avoids conventional identification biases by using data from a survey of
corporate executives, which asks directly how their companies investment plans are
likely to be influenced by changes in interest rates, holding other factors constant. The
data come from the quarterly Duke University/CFO Magazine Business Global Outlook
survey of financial executives, a web-based survey completed by around 600 to 900 U.S.
companies each quarter. Our analysis focuses on the responses from CFOs of U.S. firms
in nonfinancial industries who provided answers to two special questions that were
included in the September 2012 survey.
The key survey questions ask the respondents to assume that demand and cost
conditions faced by your firm and industry remain the same and then answer the
following: By how much would your borrowing costs have to decrease to cause you to
initiate, accelerate, or increase investment projects in the next year? After responding,
the executives were asked the opposite question, by how much would your borrowing
costs have to increase to cause you to delay or stop investment projects. They were
given six response choices (in addition to the option to responding not applicable).
These choices were: 0.5 percentage point, 1 percentage point, 2 percentage points, 3
percentage points, more than 3 percentage points, or likely would not change investment

Gilchrist and Zakrajsek (2007) estimate separate component elasticities and find large cross-sectional
investment sensitivity to the idiosyncratic component of interest rates, or spreads over market rates.
However, to the extent they are unable to control for cash flow news that affects firm-level spreads, this
approach is vulnerable to producing upward-biased elasticities, the opposite of time series studies.

plans in response to an interest rate increase. If the latter response is chosen, the
respondent was prompted with an open-ended question: Why not?
To provide further context for interpreting those responses and to analyze factors that
influence the firms reported interest-rate sensitivity, we construct indicators of the firms
financial condition and its outlook based on the regular quarterly survey questions that
ask about the firms expectations for growth and about issues of greatest management
concern. Another important piece of information came from a special question that asks
Do you plan to borrow to fund at least part of your investment in the next year. The
survey also provides information on some basic firm characteristics such as broad
industry and firm size.
Our findings can be summarized as follows. The vast majority of CFOs indicate that
their investment plans are quite insensitive to potential decreases in their borrowing
costs. Only 8% of firms would increase investment if borrowing costs declined 100 basis
points, and an additional 8% would respond to a decrease of 100 to 200 basis points.
Strikingly, 68% did not expect any decline in interest rates would induce more
investment. In addition, we find that firms expect to be somewhat more sensitive to an
increase in interest rates. Still, only 16% of firms would reduce investment in response
to a 100 basis point increase, and another 15% would respond to an increase of 100 to
200 basis points.
A few factors help to explain the cross-sectional variation in reported investment
sensitivity to interest rates. One of the strongest factors, particularly with regard to
increases in interest rates, is whether a firm has plans to borrow to finance some of their
investment plans in the year ahead. Those without plans to borrow were much less likely
to anticipate cutting back in response to an increase or required a larger increase to
induce a cutback.
A factor that influenced the propensity to respond to both borrowing cost increases
and decreases was whether the firm considered working capital management to be a top

concern (about 25% of firms). A third and perhaps more surprising factor is a firms
expectations for revenue growth over the coming year. In particular, firms with higher
growth expectations were found to be less sensitive to changes in interest rates. On the
other hand, investment sensitivity to interest rates did not appear to be related to firm
characteristics such as firm size, whether it is publicly or privately owned, or its industry
classification. Finally, we attempted to test for an uncertainty effect (related to the option
value of waiting) but our proxy for uncertainty did not have a significant negative effect
on interest-rate sensitivity.
As noted above, firms that expected their investment plans to be unresponsive to any
conceivable decrease (or increase) in borrowing cost were given the space to provide a
reason, and most offered one. The most commonly cited reason for insensitivity was the
firms ample cash reserves or cash flow. Two other popular reasons were: (i) interest
rates are already low (absolutely, or compared to firms rate of return); and (ii) the firms
investment was based largely on product demand or long-term plans rather than on
current interest rates. Only about 10% of firms providing a reason for not responding to a
decrease cited a lack of profitable opportunities, and only a handful offered high
uncertainty as a reason.
Twelve months after survey respondents were questioned on their likely responses to
prospective changes in interest rates, actual longer-term interest rates were, in the event,
about 100 basis points higher. The September 2013 Global Business Outlook thus asked
CFOs how their firms reacted to these developments and the responses broadly confirmed
the limited sensitivity indicated in our analysis of the predicted reactions in the original
survey.
Finally, as part of our effort to expand upon the interpretation of our findings, we also
provide survey-based evidence on how firms self-reported hurdle rates for new
investment have evolved during the past 30-years slide in market interest rates. The
corroborating evidence on firms hurdle rates is gathered from the Duke/CFO Magazine
survey in selected recent quarters, as well as several one-time surveys by academics, in

which U.S. companies have been reported their hurdle rates,. The data indicate that
hurdle rates remain surprisingly high of late and, in the aggregate, apparently quite
insensitive to interest rates over time.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the special
questions on the interest rate sensitivity of investment plans in the Global Business
Outlook survey.

Section 3 describes sample selection and firm characteristics of

respondents by their reported sensitivity to interest rate changes. Section 4 presents our
empirical methodology and main results. Section 5 discusses the implications of our
findings using complementary evidence from previous studies on hurdle rates and
Section 6 concludes.

2. Data
2.1. The CFO Survey
The Duke CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook (or Duke/CFO) survey,
conducted quarterly by Duke University and the CFO magazine since 1996, polls
financial executives of firms with sales ranging from less than $25 million to more than
$10 billion, from a wide spectrum of industries.4 Each quarter, e-mail invitations to
complete the web-based survey are sent to thousands of firms. In recent years, around
800 to 900 companies have completed the survey each quarter.
The measure of CFO sentiment constructed from the survey and published by Duke
CFO Magazine tracks fairly closely the sentiment gauge that is constructed from the
Global Business Outlook Survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
[construct comparison chart]. Special questions from the Duke/CFO survey have been
used to study a wide range of topics in corporate finance, including capital structure
(Graham and Harvey, 2001), payout policies (Brav et al., 2005), liquidity management in

General information about the survey can be consulted at http://www.cfosurvey.org.

periods of stress (Campello et al., 2011), and the effects of financial crises on
nonfinancial firms (Campello, Graham, and Harvey, 2010).
2.2. Special questions on the sensitivity of investment to interest rate changes
The CFO survey conducted in September 2012 included, for the first time, questions
asking respondents how sensitive their investment plans are likely to be in response to
potential increases or decreases in the interest rates they faced. Our analysis focuses on
the survey responses from about 550 private sector CFOs at U.S. nonfinancial firms,
thereby excluding responses from non-for-profit and government entities as well as
financial firms. To gauge the sensitivity of investment plans to changes in interest rates,
all survey respondents were asked the following question:
Wed like to better understand the extent to which borrowing costs affect your
investment plans. Assuming demand and cost conditions faced by your firm and
industry remain the same, please answer the following: By how much would
your borrowing costs have to decrease to cause you to initiate, accelerate, or
increase investment projects in the next year?
Responses were structured in multiple choice format; in addition to Not applicable,
there were six possible responses: (1) 0.5 percentage points, (2) 1 percentage point,
(3) 2 percentage points, (4) 3 percentage points, (5) More than 3 percentage points,
or (6) Likely would not change investment plans in response to an interest rate
increase.

If the sixth option was chosen, the respondent was prompted with an open-

ended question: Why not?

2.3. Univariate results on interest rate sensitivity
Column 1 of Table 1 shows the distribution of responses to the hypothetical decreases
in interest rates. A large majority of respondents reported that their investment plans
would be quite insensitive to decreases in interest rates. Among the 541 completed
responses to this question, only 8% of firms indicated that they would react to a decrease
in borrowing costs of 1 percentage point or less; an additional 8% would respond to a 2
7

percentage point decrease in borrowing costs; and another 16% would respond to a
decrease of 3 percentage points or more, whereas 68% of respondents would likely not
change their investment plans in response to a decrease in borrowing costs. Finally, as
noted at the bottom of the table, 139 of the respondents chose not applicable.5
[Insert Table 1 about here]
Following the question on interest rate decreases, survey respondents were also asked
in the same multiple-choice format about a hypothetical increase in their borrowing costs:
By how much would your borrowing costs have to increase to cause you to delay or stop
investment projects? The responses to this second question (in column 2) indicate
somewhat more sensitivity to interest rate increases than decreases, but the size of the
increases most would bear before cutting back investment tended to be quite large.
Among the 534 firms that answered this special question, 16% would react to an increase
in borrowing costs of 1 percentage point or less; another 16% would react to a 2
percentage point increase. Another 31% would only react to an increase of 3 percentage
points or more, while 37% responded they would likely not change their investment plans
in response to an increase in borrowing costs.

3. Characteristics of sample respondents

For analyzing firm characteristics that might explain cross-sectional differences in the
sensitivity to interest rates, we restrict attention to the subsample of 428 firms that
provided (non-N.A.) responses to both interest rate sensitivity questions and that
completed all the other survey questions used to construct our key explanatory variables.
The distributions of the responses to the interest rate sensitivity questions in this
subsample are very similar to those shown for the full sample of responses in Table 1.

Only 10 respondents provided no response to the question whatsoever.

The standard survey includes questions that identify some basic firm characteristics,
including firm size (by revenues and number of employees), ownership (public or
privately owned), and broad industry sector. In addition, each quarterly survey contains a
set of questions asking respondents to provide quantitative responses on their
expectations for a variety of financial performance metrics for their firm over the coming
12 months. Two survey metrics are ultimately used in our analysis, expected revenue
growth, the metric which had the highest response rate, with the vast majority of firms
providing responses, and capital spending growth, for which the response frequency is
about 15% lower.
Our primary gauge of firm size comes from a question asking firms to categorize their
annual revenue within one of seven buckets: (1) less than $25 million, (2) $25 million to
$99 million, (3) $100 million to $499 million, (4), $500 million to $999 million, (5) $1
billion to $4.9 billion, (6) $5 billion to $9.9 billion, (7) more than $10 billion. A similar
question asks firms to report their number of employees within similarly broad ranges,
but responses are provided a little less frequently than to the revenue question.
Figure 1 shows the distribution of firms by number of employees (Panel A) and by
current revenue (Panel B). These two measures of size provide similar pictures of the
distribution of respondents in our sample. In particular, both distributions are skewed
towards smaller firms, and around one-third of respondents are in the bottom category of
size either in terms of the number of employees or sales revenue. Even so, the sample
also contains a non-negligible fraction of very large firms.
[Insert Figure 1 about here]
Figure 2 plots the distribution of firms in our sample by expected revenue growth
(Panel A) and by expected capital expenditure growth (Panel B). At the time of the
survey, a significant portion of firms in our sample expected modest growth in revenues
over the next 12 months. About one-third of firms in our sample reported that they
expected sales to increase between 0 and 6% over the next year. Even so, almost 15% of

firms in our sample expected very strong revenue growth (20% or more).

The

distribution of expected growth in capital expenditures was similar, but slightly more
concentrated around zero growth than the distribution of expected revenue growth.
[Insert Figure 2 about here]
The survey question that is perhaps most obviously related to the focus of our
analysis is question 8: Do you plan to borrow to finance some of your investment plans
next year. Assuming no capital market imperfections, the interest rate is a component of
the opportunity cost of an investment for all firms, and so interest rates should influence
all firms investment decisions on the margin, and not just those that expect to borrow.
Alternatively, to the extent that capital market imperfections create substantial wedges,
such as in the pecking order theory of financing, then changes in interest rates could be
less decision-relevant to the subset of firms that do not plan to finance marginal
investment with debt. We construct a dummy indicator equal to 1 for those firms that do
plan to borrow and zero for firms that indicated they have no plan to borrow or that the
question about borrowing is not applicable. As shown in the first column of Table 2,
49% of our sample firms indicate plans to borrow.
Finally, we construct a pair of variables from the responses to a regular survey
question that asks firms to indicate their top three company-specific concerns they face,
and prompts them with 13 standard response options as well as the opportunity to
indicate other non-listed concerns. The responses a firm chooses to this question might
be indicative of characteristics that are likely to influence firm investment plans. The two
most commonly chosen of the standard response choices offered are concern with ability
to maintain margins and cost of health care, flagged by about 60% and 40% of sample
respondents, respectively. In our analysis, we focus on two of the other fairly commonly
flagged responses, one that indicates uncertainty is a major concern and one that indicates
that access to financing is a major concern.

10

The choice of top concerns that most clearly indicates the importance of uncertainty
is the concern about ability to forecast results, flagged by 32% of sample firms. Thus,
we construct a dummy indicator for uncertainty, equal to 1 for all those observations
where the respondent chose ability to forecast results as a top three concern. Theories
of investment that focus on the option value of waiting (e.g., Abel and Eberly, 1996;
Dixit and Pindyck, 1994) suggest that, all else the same, firms facing relatively high
uncertainty are likely to be relatively insensitive to changes in user-cost parameters,
including the interest rate.
The other presumably highly germane concern among those listed is concern about
working capital management, which was flagged by 26% of the sample firms. If
working capital management is a top concern, this would seem to indicate that the
respondent firm is more sensitive to financial market conditions, perhaps because it does
not have access to ample internally-generated funds.

Thus, one might expect the

investment (as well as operational) plans of firms that flag working capital concerns to
be more sensitive to potential changes in the cost of borrowing.6
Panel A in Table 2 summarizes the characteristics of firms that responded to the
special question about the sensitivity of their investment plans to interest rate increases.
Column 1 shows statistics for the full sample used in the regression model estimation. As
indicated earlier, 26% have working capital concerns, 32% have concerns about
uncertainty, and 49% plan to borrow. In addition, 78% of respondents are privately held,
58% expect robust revenue growth (above 5%) over the next year, while 57% are
relatively small with revenues less than $100 million. Manufacturing firms account for a
third of the sample, with services (18%) and retail (14%) being the second and third most
represented industry groups. Finally, indicated at the bottom of the table, 15% of our
sample firms did not provide a response to the inquiry about their expected growth in

The other response option that indicates the importance of the financial conditions the firm faces, is a
concern about balance sheet weakness, which is flagged by about 15% of the respondents and which we
do not find to have any effect on interest rate sensitivity.

11

capital expenditures. Some of the regression analysis excludes those observations in an

effort to impose additional quality control on the survey data.
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Panel A in Table 2 also splits the sample of respondents according to their sensitivity
to interest rate increases. When compared with firms that would not change their plans in
response to any increase in interest rates (column 3), firms that would respond to an
increase (column 2) are more likely to consider working capital management to be a top
concern. In addition, firms that would respond to an interest rate increase are much more
likely to report plans to borrow to finance some of their investment. Finally, perhaps
surprisingly, firms that would respond to an increase are less likely to be anticipating
robust (5% or more) revenue growth, compared to those that would not change their
plans in response to an increase. To the contrary, under the presumption that firms with
slower-growing revenues have fewer profitable growth prospects, we might have
expected these firms to be less sensitive to interest rates than faster-growing firms.
The last column in Table 2 shows the characteristics of the observations that were
omitted from our study because the firm chose to respond not applicable to the question
on interest rate increases. It is not entirely clear how one should interpret the choosing of
not applicable (NA).

It is tempting to infer that choosing NA is tantamount to

responding that a change in borrowing cost is not relevant and thus would not affect the
firm or its investment decisions. Of course, assuming such an interpretation is clearly
speculative, so we have excluded such observations from our main analysis. Still, it is
somewhat instructive to compare the characteristics of the firms responding NA to our
primary sample firms. Although the non-respondents are similar in many dimensions to
the sample of respondents, the firms that responded NA were much less likely to report
plans to borrow, and they were a lot more likely to leave blank (NA) their response for
expected 12-month growth in capital spending. Finally, they were somewhat less likely
to report robust revenue growth, and tended to be smaller in size when compared with our
regression sample.

12

Our findings are very similar when we compare the subsample of firms that would
change their plans in response to interest rate decreases and the subsample that would not
change plans in response to a decrease (Table 2, Panel B). In particular, firms that are
responsive to interest rate decreases (column 2) are more likely to consider working
capital management as a top concern and also tend to expect weaker revenue growth
compared to firms that are not responsive to rate decreases (column 3). In contrast, there
does not appear to be any difference in the propensity to have borrowing plans.

4. Regression Analysis
4.1. Estimation Methodology
As the responses to the special questions reported in Table 1 clearly indicate, a
significant portion of firms reported that they would not adjust their investment plans in
response to any of the hypothetical changes in interest rates.

This raises the

methodological question of whether these respondents should be treated as an entirely

different category (completely insensitive) from those that indicated a threshold interest
rate change that would induce them to adjust capital expenditures. This interpretation
calls for a qualitative response regression model (e.g., a probit). Alternatively, we could
treat firms that would not change their investment plans as very insensitive, but still
falling along the interest-rate sensitivity continuum. In this case, we could assume they
would respond but only to a large change in rates that was inconceivable in the context of
the survey question.

Of course, that magnitude is also unobservable to the

econometrician. This second interpretation would call for a censored response model
(i.e., a tobit). We employ both approaches in this paper.
In the qualitative response approach, we define

as a dummy

variable that is equal to one if the firm answered that it would delay or stop investment
projects in response to an increase in interest rates of 0.5 percentage point, 1 percentage
point, 2 percentage points, 3 percentage points, or more than 3 percentage points. On the

13

other hand, the dummy variable was set to zero if the firm reported that it would likely
not change its investment plans in response to an interest rate increase. We analogously

define the dummy variable

based on the special question about the

adjustment of investment plans in response to interest rate decreases.

We then model the probability of a firm reporting that it would react to a rate increase
using a probit regression:
1

, and

where

indexes firms,

represents

(1)

is the standard normal cumulative distribution, and

industry

dummies

technology/telecommunications,

(retail,

services,

health,

mining,
and

other

transportation,
industries,

with

and

manufacturing as the omitted industry). The dummy variables

are equal to one for firms reporting, respectively, that working capital and
uncertainty are one of their top three business concerns, and zero otherwise.

is also an indicator variable, constructed from responses to the

question: Do you plan to borrow to fund at least part of your investment plans next

year?
months.7

is the firms expected revenue growth over the next 12

is an index based on annual revenues ranging from 1 (less than $25

million) to 7 (more than $10 billion), and

firms.

We

variable

also

separately

is a dummy variable for privately held

estimate

equation

(1)

with

the

dependent

, the dummy variable that identifies whether or not firms

would not change investment plans in response to an interest rate decrease.

In the second approach to modeling the interest rate sensitivity of investment plans,
the dependent variable is the degree of interest rate sensitivity; specifically, it is the

We winsorize

at the 10th and 90th percentiles in all regressions.
qualitatively similar using other winsorization thresholds.

14

Results are

(minimum) interest rate change that would induce the respondent firm to alter its
investment.

The clear advantage of this approach is that we exploit more of the

information in the responses by measuring differences in sensitivity along a continuum.

The disadvantage is that it requires us to impute a more subtle interpretation to the
respondents choice of would likely not react.
In particular, in the second approach to modeling the response to the question about
an increase in borrowing costs, we estimate the following tobit specification:

max 3.1,

(2)

is equal to the numerical response, either 0.5, 1, 2, or 3

percentage points, when one of these responses are chosen. On the other hand, the
response is assumed to be censored, or unobserved, when the true threshold is above 3
percentage points. In particular, we assume that the unobserved threshold is above 3.1
percentage points8 both for firms that chose More than 3 percentage points and those
that choose Likely would not change plans in response to the question about a
prospective increase in borrowing costs. The vector of explanatory variables is the same
as in equation (1), and

is an independent and identically distributed normal disturbance.

Finally, we separately estimate a similar equation with censored dependent variable,

, constructed in an analogous fashion from responses to the

question about a prospective decrease in borrowing costs.

4.2. Qualitative response results: Interest-rate sensitive versus not sensitive
We begin by reviewing the results for the probit specification, in which firms either
react or do not react to interest rate changes. The results from estimating the probit
model in equation (1) for the probability that a firm would react to an increase in rates
are summarized in Table 3. The table reports estimated marginal effects for a firm with
average characteristics. In the initial specification, column 1, we include only the key
explanatory variables. In column 2 we add all the other control variables in vector

Our results are robust to right-censoring the dependent variable at 3.5 percentage points instead.

15

industry fixed effects, the size index, and the dummy for privately held firms. In column
3 we exclude sample firms that expected revenue to contract more than 5%, as these
firms that seem much less likely to have many investment opportunities to begin with.
The sample in column 4 is further restricted by excluding those firms that, when asked
about their expected growth in capital expenditures over the next 12 months, left it blank,
rather than choosing a quantitative response (as instructed for questions that are not
applicable). Firms that provide a forecast for growth in capital expenditures would seem
to be better positioned to respond to a question about how interest rates would affect their
investment plans.
[Insert Table 3 about here]
Consistent with the univariate statistics reported in Table 2, the statistics reported in
the first and third rows indicate that firms that report working capital concerns, and those
that plan to borrow, are more likely to reduce capital expenditures in response to an
interest rate increase. Based on the estimated marginal effects in column (2), an average
firm reporting working capital concerns is 14 percentage points more likely to indicate it
would reduce capital expenditures in response to some interest rate increase. Similarly, a
firm that plans to borrow is 28 percentage points more likely to respond to some interest
rate increase.

These results are robust when considering different sets of controls

(columns 1 and 2) or different samples (columns 3 and 4). Thus, despite the generally
low level of sensitivity to interest rate changes by most firms in the survey, firms that
actually perceive debt as a marginal source of funding are more likely to respond to
interest rate movements.
Perhaps more interesting is the significant effect of expected near-term growth
prospects, as represented by Revenue Growth. Firms expecting higher revenue growth-those that presumably have greater investment opportunities--are less likely to respond to
interest rate increases. Moreover, in specification (3), where we exclude those firms
expecting revenue to decline by 5% or morethose firms that are less likely to be
contemplating substantial capital expendituresthe estimated marginal effect is larger in

16

magnitude. Firms with a 10% higher expected revenue growth rate are 11 percentage
points less likely to respond to an interest rate increase. One plausible interpretation of
this finding is that firms with stronger growth opportunities are only considering
investments whose expected returns are well above the margin where changes in interest
rates are relevant for investment plans.
Indeed, it appears that all the influential variables appear to have larger effects in
specification (3), and the pseudo-R2 increases as well, suggesting that our model fits
better for firms that are more likely to be contemplating substantial investment in the first
place. In a similar vein, the model appears to fit even a bit better in column 4, where we
omit firms that did not report an expected growth rate for capital expenditures (as if it the
question was not applicable). Thus, the model fits better on those observations where
firms appear to be in a better position to contemplate the potential effect of interest rates
on investment plans. We similarly analyze the sensitivity of firms to interest rate
decreases, and the results from these probit regressions are reported in Table 4.
[Insert Table 4 about here]
Similar to our findings for the sensitivity to interest rate increases, we also find that
firms concerned about working capital management are more likely to respond to interest
rate decreases. In addition, firms expecting more robust growth in sales are less likely to
react to rate decreases. Interestingly, in contrast with the findings in Table 3, we do not
find that those firms planning to borrow (to at least partly fund their investment) to be
any more sensitive than firms not planning to borrow. Thinking in terms of discretized
decisions, this asymmetry seems sensible: if firms are already planning to borrow, then
an increase in rates could push the investment plan out of the money; but a decrease in
rates might not alter their calculus. Indeed, it might be even more likely to change the
decision of some firms that are not planning to borrow. Finally, as in Table 3, we find
our results tend to be stronger when we exclude firms expecting revenue declines and
firms that did not report an expected growth rate for investment.

17

4.3. Determinants of the degree of investment sensitivity to interest rates

In this section we treat the firms that indicated they would not alter their investment
plans to changes in interest rates as having a high unobservable threshold below which
they are insensitive. . Given their unobservable (censored) threshold, as well as that for
those firms explicitly indicating they would respond to a change greater than 3 percent,
we estimate a tobit model on the size of the interest rate change that would induce a
response. As with the probit regressions, we first consider the reaction to interest rate
increases.
The results from estimating equation (2) on the minimum rate increase that would
cause firms to adjust their investment plans are summarized in Table 5. The regression in
column 1 excludes industry fixed effects, the size index, and the dummy for privately
held firms. In column 2 we include all the control variables. In column 3 we restrict the
sample to firms that expected revenue growth greater than 5%. The sample in column 4
is further restricted to firms that reported an expected growth rate (of any sign) for capital
expenditures. Finally, the sample in column 5 excludes those firms that indicated they
would not react to any increase in interest rate (i.e., unresponsive firms).
[Insert Table 5 about here]
Consistent with the results from the probit regressions, we find that firms reporting
having working capital concerns tend to respond to smaller increases in interest rates,
suggesting greater rate-sensitivity of investment plans. In addition, we find that firms
planning to borrow at least part of their investment funds also adjust their investment
plans in response to relatively smaller changes in rates. Finally, we find that firms
expecting relatively greater revenue growthand thus presumably more robust
investment opportunitiesare less sensitive to interest rate increases in the sense that
they tend to require larger changes in rates to adjust their investment plans. As in the
probit regressions, excluding firms that expect revenue declines (column 3) and those that
do not provide an expected growth rate for capital expenditures (column 4) tends to boost

18

a bit the magnitude of the estimated coefficients and improve model fit. As a final
robustness check, in column 5 we drop observations for which firms answered that they
would likely not change plans in response to an increase in borrowing costs. The in
this case are attenuated somewhat and the pseudo-R2 is lower. Reflecting the fall-off in
sample size, statistical significance is also somewhat weaker; nonetheless, in a qualitative
sense, the results are quite similar to the previous specifications.
We reproduce the analogous regression specification to estimate the sensitivity to
interest rate decreases, that is, we estimate the minimum decrease in interest rates that
would cause firms to initiate, increase, or accelerate their investment plans. In the first
four specifications shown in Table 6, we find that the coefficients associated with
working capital concerns are again negative and statistically significant, indicating that
firms reporting concerns about working capital management are more responsive to
interest rate decreases. However, some of the results in Table 6 are a bit different from
those in the probit regressions. In particular, unlike the probit specification for interest
rate decreases, the coefficients on Plan to Borrow are significant in some of the
specifications here, suggesting that firms with plans to borrow tend to require a smaller
interest rate decrease to react.
[Insert Table 6 about here]
On the other hand, the positive coefficients on expected revenue growth suggest that
faster growing firms again tend to require larger interest rate changes before they react,
but this coefficient is never statistically significant in these regressions. One new effect
uncovered in this specification is that firms having uncertainty concerns require larger
interest rate declines to induce an increase in investment, a result that is consistent with
the option value theory of investing. Finally, in the specification in column (5), we again
drop observations in which the firm indicated it would likely not change plans in
response to a decrease in borrowing costs. This restriction removes two-thirds of the
remaining sample, and the results suggest that, across this group of firms, uncertainty
concerns is the only characteristic that significantly affects sensitivity.

19

5. Interpretation and Implications

5.1 Reasons given for investment insensitivity
Respondents who indicated their firms would not change investment plans as a result
of a decrease (or increase) in borrowing costs were prompted with the question, why
not? and most offered a reason. While responses were not guided by any structure
(beyond a blank line to fill in), we found that the majority of them fell into a handful of
fairly well-delineated themes.

The most commonly cited rationale offered for

insensitivity to prospective interest rate changes centered on the idea that debt was not a
marginal source of finance. Most of the responses in this category invoked the firms
ability to finance desired investments internally, owing to the presence of ample cash
reserves or sufficient cash flow from ongoing operations (Table 7). Also included in this
category is a handful of cases where the respondent said either that their firm does not use
debt or that they had already locked in financing. Overall, this category of response was
offered by about half the firms that would likely not respond to an increase in borrowing
costs and a third of firms that would not respond to a decrease.
[Insert Table 7 about here]
The two other relatively common reasons were: (i) interest rates are already low,
absolutely or compared to firms rate of return (more common in the case of interest rate
decreases); or (ii) the firms investment is based largely on product demand or a longterm plan, rather than on current interest rates. The fourth and final common reason,
invoked by about 10% of firms providing one, was a lack of profitable opportunities.
Surprisingly, only 3% cited high uncertainty as the reason for not responding to a
decrease, while only 2% cited lack of access to credit. Of course, lack of access could be
an underrepresented reason if most firms lacking access to credit were prone to choose
not applicable in response to the primary questions on interest rates changes. Overall,
these findings suggest that, for many firms in September 2012, the level of interest rates

20

was not an important determinant of investment plans largely because debt was not
viewed as a marginal source of funding or because firms own hurdle rates for investment
far exceed, or have little relation to, interest rates at the their recent low levels.
5.2 Some evidence on investment hurdle rates
If the connection between prevailing interest rates and the hurdle rates firms use to
determine investment choices is critical to interpreting our results, then it would be
instructive to examine the available survey evidence on hurdle rates and how they have
changed over time. Over the past 30 years, a handful of surveys focusing on firms
capital budgeting practices have included questions asking respondents for their current
investment hurdle ratesthe expected rates of return they require for dedicating capital
to new projects. On a couple of occasions, the Duke CFO Business Outlook Survey has
itself included a question asking for firms hurdle rates, one instance being the survey in
the second quarter of 2012, just prior to the survey studied in this paper.
Using all 328 completed responses from that survey, we find that the average
respondent reported a hurdle rate of 14.1%, while the median value was 13.4%. On the
face of it, this seems quite high relative to the average BBB-rated corporate bond yield at
that time, which was close to 4%. To compare Global Business Outlook survey results
with previous survey studies, we calculate and plot the results for the subsample of 150
respondents that are nonfinancial corporations with sales in excess of $100 million. In
this subsample, both the mean and median hurdle rates are even a bit higher, at 15%.
Just as interesting as the level of hurdle rates in 2012, and perhaps more relevant to
the question at hand, is how little hurdle rates appear to have changed over time, even
long periods of time. Figure 3 plots average corporate hurdle rates drawn from five
different surveys conducted between 1985 and 2011, alongside a plot of the BBB 10-year
corporate bond yield and the 10-year Treasury yield over this period. The two most
recent snapshots prior to 2012 also came from the Global Business Outlook survey,
which in the first quarter of 2011 included a question asking firms for their current hurdle

21

rates and how much they had changed from their hurdle rates in 2007. The other three
snapshots each came from one-off surveys conducted to provide the inputs to academic
studies.
[Insert Figure 3 about here]
The four post-2000 data points suggest that the average corporate hurdle rate has been
quite stable for at least ten years, showing no evidence of a downward shift in concert
with the general decline in interest rates over this period. Indeed, in the 2003 survey
study, more than half of the respondents claimed that they had not changed their hurdle
rate in the three years leading up to the survey, suggesting the recent prevailing level
extends back at least to 2000. The results from two earlier surveys indicate that the
average hurdle rate was about 2% higher in the 1980s and early 1990s. Even so, the
difference pales in comparison to the 8 percentage point drop in interest rates between
mid-1985 and 2012; moreover, the median and modal responses appear to be unchanged
or close to unchanged over the entire period. The fact that the mode has been a constant
15% throughout the entire period suggests that hurdle rates are determined using rough
rules of thumb, rather than fine-tuned calculations, an interpretation that would account
for the lack of sensitivity to interest rates reported by vast majority of the firms in our
study.
One final bit of insight on the factors that affect interest rate sensitivity among firms
in the September CFO survey might come from examining the cross-sectional variation
in hurdle rates reported by firms in the second quarter 2012 CFO survey (a quarter prior
to our study). In particular, recall the finding that firms expecting higher revenue growth
tend to report lower sensitivity to prospective interest rate changes. We conjectured that
this could be because the expected return on the marginal investments of higher growth
firms tends to be much higher than current interest rates (and the returns on marginal
investments by lower-growth firms). Using the hurdle rate data from this survey, we
could examine whether higher growth firms tend to have higher hurdle rates, which
would be consistent with this conjecture.

22

If so, this would also suggest that

understanding the large gap between the average hurdle rate and current interest rates
could shed light on the generally low degree of interest sensitivity expressed by the
average firm.
As a simple test of this idea, we divide the 268 nonfinancial firms that provided a
numerical response to the question asking for their hurdle rate in the earlier 2012 survey
into quintiles according to their expected 12-month revenue growth. These quintile
ranges are: (i) below 1%, (ii) 1% to 5%, (iii) 5% to 8%, (iv) 8% to 15%, and (v) 15% or
higher. Moving from lowest to highest revenue growth quintile, we find the following
group median hurdle rates: 12%, 12%, 14.5%, 15%, and 18.5%. Group means progress
in a similar monotonic fashion and, by either measure, the median or mean hurdle rate for
the highest growth quintile is significantly higher than that for the lowest growth quintile.
This is consistent with our conjecture that investment by higher-growth firms is relatively
insensitive to interest rates because their hurdle rates are far above and perhaps largely
unaffected by interest rates.
5.3 Reported sensitivity to actual interest rate increase
By August 2013, twelve months after Global Business Outlook surveyed firms on
their sensitivity to hypothetical interest rate changes, long-term interest rates had in fact
risen substantially; notably, yields on 10-year Treasury bonds and investment-grade
bonds were about 100 basis points higher. Fortuitously, the Global Business Outlook
survey for the third quarter of 2013 once again included questions about interest-rate
sensitivity, including a retrospective question:
Over the past quarter, interest rates have increased by 1%. What effect have higher
rates had to this point on your capital spending [also hiring, debt financing]?
Among the 396 usable responses to this question, 9 CFOs indicated their capital
spending was reduced significantly and 28 indicated it was reduced somewhat.
Thus, in total, 9.3% of respondents claimed they had reduced capital spending in
response, closely in line with the 10% of respondents from the 2012 survey who

23

predicted their firm would reduce investment plans in response to a 100 basis point
increase. Also consistent with our previous findings, those firms that reporting reduced
capital spending owing to the interest rate increase also reported relatively low growth
prospects on average. Their median expected 12-month revenue growth was 0.5%,
compared to a median of 7.0% among firms that did not report a cut in capital spending
due to the interest rate increase.
Following the question about effects of the recent rise in interest rates, the 2013
survey asked forward-looking questions about interest rate increases, the first being:
If benchmark long-term interest rates increase 1% [more] by the end of 2013, will
this affect your capital spending?
For the 91% of the sample respondents that had not indicated reducing capital spending
as a result of the recent 1% increase in interest rates, their responses to the forwardlooking question in principle should indicate whether a total increase in interest rates (by
year end) of 2% would induce a cutback in their capital spending. Within this group, only
15 respondents, about 3.7% of the overall sample, indicated they would likely reduce
capital spending as a result. This suggests even less sensitivity to a 200 basis point
increase than the results from the original survey. Responses to this later survey thus
appear to support our inferences from the original survey.
6. Conclusions
This paper takes a survey approach to study the interest rate sensitivity of investment,
a central question in investment theory, as well as the transmission of monetary policy.
In contrast to previous work in this area, which has mostly relied on observed ex-post
investment outcomes at the firm or aggregate levels, our approach allows us to focus on
firms planned (ex-ante) policies.
Using a special set of questions on the reaction of firms to hypothetical increases and
decreases in interest rates asked of respondents to the Global Business Outlook survey
conducted in the second quarter of 2012, we find that most firms did not see themselves
24

as likely to increase investment if interest rates decreased.

Firms expected to be

somewhat more sensitive to interest rate increases than decreases, but for the most part
the interest rate increases required to elicit adjustments to investment plans are generally
quite large.
The investment plans of firms that do not expect to borrow over the coming year or
for firms that do not report that working capital management as one of their top business
concerns tend to be less sensitive to interest rate changes than the average sample firm.
More surprisingly, we find that firms that expect stronger growth in revenue
presumably firms with brighter investment opportunitiesalso tend to be less sensitive to
interest rates. We interpret this finding as suggesting that faster growing firms face
marginal investment returns that substantially exceed the cost of borrowing. Separately,
we provide evidence from other business surveys conducted over the past few decades
which indicates that, in contrast to steeply declining interest rates, average hurdle rates
have remained elevated and quite steady over that period. This seems to corroborate our
main finding that investment plans tend to be quite insensitive to interest rates.
Of course, there are many caveats to our study. Perhaps most importantly, the key
survey questions have been asked only once, in September 2012, anddespite the bit of
corroborating evidence from the year-later surveywe do not know the extent to which
inferences can be extrapolated to other periods. Moreover, while our analysis is less
vulnerable to the usual identification problems faced by analysis of ex-post investment
behavior, survey responses to hypotheticals should be interpreted with caution. Finally,
the Duke CFO survey results do not necessarily rule out a sizable aggregate investment
response if the minority of firms that do respond to interest rate changes tend to alter
investment by large amounts. Still, the findings from the special questions in the Duke
CFO survey about the interest rate sensitivity of investment, together with the evidence
on consistently elevated investment hurdle rates in several prior studies, arguably provide
some support for the view that investment is not as tightly linked to interest rates as
traditional theory would suggest.

25

References
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uncertainty, American Economic Review 84, 1369-1384.
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in the 21st century, Journal of Financial Economics 77, 483-527.
Caballero, Ricardo J., 1994, Small sample bias and adjustment costs, Review of
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Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999, Aggregate investment, in John B. Taylor and Michael
Woodford, eds., Handbook of macroeconomics, Vol 1B, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Campello, Murillo, Erasmo Giambona, John R. Graham, and Campbell R. Harvey, 2011,
Liquidity management and corporate investment during a financial crisis, Review of
Financial Studies 24, 1944-1979.
Campello, Murillo, John R. Graham, and Campbell R. Harvey, 2010, The real effects of
financial constraints: Evidence from a financial crisis, Journal of Financial Economics
97, 470-487.
Chirinko, Robert S., 1993, Business fixed investment spending: Modeling strategies,
empirical results, and policy implications, Journal of Economic Literature 31, 18751911.
Cummins, Jason G., Kevin A. Hassett, and N Glenn Hubbard, 1994, A reconsideration of
investment behavior using tax reforms as natural experiments, Brooking Papers on
Economic Activity 25, 1-74.
Dixit, Avinash, and Robert S. Pindyck, 1994, Investment under uncertainty, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Gilchrist, Simon, and Egon Zakrajsek, 2007, Investment and the cost of capital: New
evidence from the corporate bond market, NBER Working paper, No. 13174.
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Graham, John R., and Campbell Harvey, 2001, The theory and practice of corporate
finance: Evidence from the field, Journal of Financial Economics 60, 187-243.
Kothari, S.P., Jonathan Lewellen, and Jerold B. Warner, 2012, The behavior of aggregate
corporate investment, Working paper.
Meier, Iwan, and Vefa Tarhan, 2007, Corporate investment decision practices and the
hurdle rate premium puzzle, Working paper, HEC Montreal and Loyola University.
Poterba, James M., and Lawrence H. Summers, 1995, A CEO survey of U.S. companies
time horizons and hurdle rates, Sloan Management Review 37, 43-53.
Schaller, Huntley, 2006, Estimating the long-run user cost elasticity, Journal of Monetary
Economics 53, 725-736.
Schaller, Huntley, 2007, The long-run effect of taxes, prices, and the interest rate on the
capital stock, Working paper, Carleton University and Institute for Advanced Studies
(Vienna).
Summers, Lawrence H., 1987, Investment incentives and the discounting of depreciation
allowances, in Martin Feldstein, ed., The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation
(Chicago: NBER and University of Chicago Press), pp. 295304
Tevlin, Stacey, and Karl Whelan, 2003, Explaining the investment boom of the 1990s,
Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 35, 1-22.

27

Panel A
Distribution by number of employees
140

Number of firms

120
100
80
60
40
20
0

Number of employees

Panel B
Distribution by revenue

160
140

Number of firms

120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Less than
$25
million

$25-$99 $100-$499 $500-$999 $1-$4.9

million
million
million
billion

$5-$9.9 More than

billion $10 billion

Revenue

Figure 1. The figure plots the distribution of respondents to the Duke CFO survey in the
third quarter of 2012 that compose the sample of firms in Table 2 by number of
employees (Panel A) and by revenue (Panel B).
28

Panel A
Distribution by revenue growth
80
70

Number of firms

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
12 -10 -8

-6

-4

-2

10 12 14 16 18 20
Expected revenue growth (percent)

Panel B
Distribution by capital expenditure growth
90
80

Number of firms

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
12 -10 -8

-6

-4

-2

10 12 14 16 18 20
Expected growth in capital expenditure (percent)

Figure 2. The figure plots the distribution of respondents to the Duke CFO survey in the
third quarter of 2012 that compose the sample of firms in Table 2 by expected revenue
growth (Panel A) and expected growth in capital expenditures (Panel B).

29

30

Table 1. Interest Rate Sensitivity of Investment Plans

This table summarizes responses in the 2012:Q3 Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey to
special questions about the sensitivity of investment plans to changes in interest rates. Column 1
summarizes responses to the question: By how much would your borrowing costs have to decrease to
cause you to initiate, accelerate, or increase investment projects next year? Column 2 summarizes
responses to the question: By how much would your borrowing costs have to increase to cause you to
delay or stop investment projects next year? Percentages are reported with respect to the total number of
firms that answered the question with an answer different from Not applicable.
(1)

(2)

In response to a
decrease in interest rates

In response to an
increase in interest rates

Number (pct.)

Number (pct.)

0.5 percentage point

17 (3%)

30 (6%)

1 percentage point

27 (5%)

52 (10%)

2 percentage points

43 (8%)

85 (16%)

3 percentage points

27 (5%)

61 (11%)

More than 3 percentage points

60 (11%)

108 (20%)

Likely would not change plans

367 (68%)

198 (37%)

Total

541 (100%)

534 (100%)

139

146

Change in borrowing costs that

would prompt a change in
investment plans

Memo: Not applicable answers

31

Table 2. Sample Characteristics

This table reports the characteristics of firms that responded to the special questions about the sensitivity of
investment plans to interest rate changes in the 2012:Q3 Duke/CFO Survey. Panel A (Panel B) reports the
characteristics of firms that responded the question: By how much would your borrowing costs have to
increase (decrease) to cause you to delay or stop (initiate, accelerate, or increase) investment projects next
year? In both panels, column (2) summarizes the characteristics of firms that would change their
investment plans in response to an interest rate change; column (3) summarizes the characteristics of firms
that would likely not change investment plans in response to the interest rate change; and column (4)
reports characteristics of firms that answered Not applicable to the special question. Working capital
concerns and uncertainty concerns are indicator variables that equal one for firms that report, respectively,
that working capital concerns and uncertainty was one of their top three concerns. Plan to borrow is an
indicator variable constructed from responses to the question: Do you plan to borrow to fund at least part
of your investment plans next year? Private firm is an indicator variable for privately held firms.
Manufacturing, services, and retail are industry dummies. The remaining industries include mining,
transportation, technology/telecommunications, health, and other industries (as reported in the survey).
Percentages are computed as a fraction of the total number of firms with data on all characteristics for the
same column.
Panel A: Split by responsiveness to interest rate increases
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Firm characteristic
Full sample
Would respond to
Would not
Memo: Answered
rate increase
change plans
not applicable to
(428 firms)
(261 firms)
(167 firms)
question on rate
increases
(146 firms)
Working capital concerns

26%

30%

21%

26%

Uncertainty concerns

32%

30%

34%

34%

Plan to borrow

49%

59%

34%

13%

Privately held

78%

77%

80%

82%

Expected revenue growth 5%

58%

54%

63%

39%

Revenue < $100 million

57%

56%

58%

77%

Manufacturing

32%

33%

31%

27%

Services

18%

17%

19%

27%

Retail

14%

12%

16%

18%

Industries other than manuf.,

services, and retail

36%

38%

34%

28%

Expected capex growth = N.A.

15%

17%

13%

42%

32

Table 2. Sensitivity to Interest Rate Changes and Firm Characteristics (continued)

Panel B: Split by responsiveness to interest rate decreases
(1)
Full sample
(428 firms)

(2)
Would respond to
rate decrease
(130 firms)

(3)
Would not
change plans
(298 firms)

(4)
Memo: answered not
applicable to question
on rate increase
(139 firms)

Working capital concerns

26%

40%

20%

26%

Uncertainty concerns

32%

29%

33%

30%

Plan to borrow

49%

50%

49%

18%

Privately held

78%

74%

80%

81%

Expected revenue growth 5%

58%

43%

64%

37%

Revenue < $100 million

57%

58%

56%

73%

Manufacturing

32%

28%

34%

27%

Services

18%

22%

16%

25%

Retail

14%

8%

16%

21%

Industries other than manuf.,

services, and retail

6%

10%

4%

5%

Expected capex growth = N.A.

15%

22%

13%

43%

Firm characteristic

33

Table 3. Regressions of the Probability of Responding to an Interest Rate Increase

This table reports the estimated marginal effects of probit regressions in which the dependent variable is an
indicator for respondents to the 2012:Q3 Duke/CFO Survey that reported that they would react to an
interest rate increase. Working capital concerns and uncertainty concerns are indicator variables that equal
one for firms that report, respectively, that working capital concerns and uncertainty was one of their top
three concerns. Expected revenue growth (over the next 12 months) is winsorized at the 10th and 90th
percentiles. Plan to borrow is an indicator variable constructed from responses to the question: Do you
plan to borrow to fund at least part of your investment plans next year? Firm size is an index based on
current annual revenues ranging from 1 (less than $25 million) to 7 (more than $10 billion). Private firm is
an indicator variable for privately held firms. Retail, mining, transportation, technology/communications,
services, health, and other industries are industry dummies. The sample in column (3) is restricted to firms
that expected revenue growth greater than 5% and the sample in column (4) is further restricted to firms
that reported an expected growth rate for capital expenditures. *** indicates statistical significance at the
1% level, ** at the 5% level, and * at the 10% level.

Working capital concerns

Uncertainty concerns
Plan to borrow
Expected revenue growth

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

0.114**
[0.052]
-0.029
[0.052]
0.258***
[0.046]
-0.007**
[0.003]

0.139***
[0.053]
-0.034
[0.053]
0.283***
[0.048]
-0.007**
[0.003]
0.028
[0.018]
-0.051
[0.067]
-0.097
[0.081]
0.09
[0.120]
-0.061
[0.103]
-0.106
[0.099]
0.067
[0.072]
0.052
[0.110]
0.074
[0.083]
428
0.0844

0.181***
[0.057]
-0.062
[0.058]
0.320***
[0.053]
-0.011**
[0.004]
0.015
[0.019]
-0.072
[0.070]
-0.113
[0.088]
0.168
[0.121]
-0.109
[0.111]
-0.174*
[0.106]
0.07
[0.079]
0.05
[0.126]
0.11
[0.089]
365
0.112

0.212***
[0.061]
-0.094
[0.063]
0.336***
[0.057]
-0.009**
[0.005]
0.032
[0.021]
-0.049
[0.077]
-0.053
[0.093]
0.226**
[0.112]
-0.118
[0.124]
-0.122
[0.118]
0.085
[0.085]
0.105
[0.136]
0.124
[0.093]
314
0.128

Firm size
Private firm
Retail
Mining
Transportation
Technology/communications
Services
Health
Other industries
Observations
Pseudo R2

428
0.065

34

Table 4. Regressions of the Probability of Responding to an Interest Rate Decrease

This table reports the estimated marginal effects of probit regressions in which the dependent variable is an
indicator for respondents to the Duke/CFO Survey that reported that they would react to an interest rate
decrease. All explanatory variables are defined as in Table 6. The sample in column (3) is restricted to
firms that expected revenue growth greater than 5% and the sample in column (4) is further restricted to
firms that reported an expected growth rate for capital expenditures. *** indicates statistical significance at
the 1% level, ** at the 5% level, and * at the 10% level.

Working capital concerns

Uncertainty concerns
Plan to borrow
Expected revenue growth

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

0.245***
[0.054]
-0.022
[0.048]
0.028
[0.045]
-0.009***
[0.003]

0.276***
[0.057]
-0.028
[0.048]
0.064
[0.048]
-0.009***
[0.003]
-0.001
[0.016]
-0.118*
[0.067]
-0.111*
[0.066]
0.061
[0.129]
0.105
[0.102]
0.063
[0.095]
0.186**
[0.077]
0.220*
[0.116]
0.088
[0.087]
428
0.0978

0.288***
[0.061]
-0.026
[0.050]
0.065
[0.051]
-0.011***
[0.004]
-0.014
[0.017]
-0.128*
[0.069]
-0.113*
[0.067]
0.16
[0.147]
0.083
[0.107]
0.048
[0.099]
0.188**
[0.085]
0.213
[0.132]
0.106
[0.094]
365
0.103

0.299***
[0.067]
-0.022
[0.053]
0.053
[0.054]
-0.012***
[0.004]
-0.004
[0.018]
-0.09
[0.072]
-0.11
[0.070]
0.197
[0.154]
0.094
[0.120]
0.05
[0.108]
0.218**
[0.092]
0.250*
[0.148]
0.085
[0.098]
314
0.112

Firm size
Private firm
Retail
Mining
Transportation
Technology/communications
Services
Health
Other industries
Observations
Pseudo R2

428
0.0597

35

Table 5. Regressions of the Increase in Interest Rates that Would Prompt a

Reaction
This table reports the estimated coefficients of tobit regressions in which the dependent variable is the
interest rate increase that would cause respondents to the Duke/CFO Survey to delay or stop investment
projects in the next year. The dependent variable is right censored at 3.1 percentage points. All
explanatory variables are defined as in Table 6. The sample in column (3) is restricted to firms that
expected revenue growth greater than 5%, the sample in column (4) is further restricted to firms that
reported an expected growth rate for capital expenditures, and the sample in column (5) further excludes
firms that would not react to any increase in interest rates. *** indicates statistical significance at the 1%
level, ** at the 5% level, and * at the 10% level.

Working capital concerns

Uncertainty concerns
Plan to borrow
Expected revenue growth

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

-0.671***
[0.195]
0.002
[0.188]
-0.655***
[0.178]
0.041***
[0.010]

-0.719***
[0.198]
0.01
[0.184]
-0.788***
[0.184]
0.041***
[0.010]
-0.003
[0.060]
0.321
[0.236]
-0.212
[0.276]
-1.141***
[0.427]
0.044
[0.365]
-0.513
[0.335]
-0.497*
[0.266]
-0.558
[0.379]
-0.403
[0.300]
3.826***
[0.369]
428
255
0.0501

-0.781***
[0.212]
0.135
[0.199]
-0.919***
[0.202]
0.046***
[0.015]
0.005
[0.064]
0.383
[0.246]
-0.216
[0.290]
-1.334***
[0.457]
0.493
[0.407]
-0.257
[0.363]
-0.555*
[0.291]
-0.307
[0.436]
-0.401
[0.318]
3.705***
[0.396]
365
226
0.0621

-0.860***
[0.230]
0.182
[0.214]
-0.961***
[0.220]
0.042***
[0.016]
-0.007
[0.069]
0.429
[0.266]
-0.428
[0.307]
-1.510***
[0.469]
0.603
[0.474]
-0.467
[0.392]
-0.704**
[0.312]
-0.616
[0.473]
-0.355
[0.338]
3.848***
[0.424]
314
194
0.0741

-0.498**
[0.193]
-0.011
[0.185]
-0.370*
[0.191]
0.031**
[0.014]
0.044
[0.057]
0.319
[0.225]
-0.481*
[0.271]
-1.141***
[0.408]
0.252
[0.362]
-0.851**
[0.365]
-0.529*
[0.270]
-0.245
[0.389]
-0.296
[0.277]
2.720***
[0.355]
220
81
0.045

Firm size
Private firm
Retail
Mining
Transportation
Technology/communications
Services
Health
Other industries
Constant
Observations
Censored Observations
Pseudo R2

3.721***
[0.168]
428
255
0.0364

36

Table 6. Regressions of the Decrease in Interest Rates that Would Prompt a

Reaction
This table reports the estimated coefficients of tobit regressions in which the dependent variable is the
interest rate decrease that would cause respondents to the Duke/CFO Survey to initiate, accelerate or
increase investment projects in the next year. The dependent variable is right censored at 3.1 percentage
points. All explanatory variables are defined as in Table 6. The sample in column (3) is restricted to firms
that expected revenue growth greater than 5%, the sample in column (4) is further restricted to firms that
reported an expected growth rate for capital expenditures, and the sample in column (5) further excludes
firms that would not react to any increase in interest rates. *** indicates statistical significance at the 1%
level, ** at the 5% level, and * at the 10% level.

Working capital concerns

Uncertainty concerns
Plan to borrow
Expected revenue growth

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

-1.163***
[0.327]
0.552*
[0.330]
-0.384
[0.298]
0.027
[0.017]

-1.263***
[0.337]
0.562*
[0.323]
-0.656**
[0.309]
0.021
[0.017]
-0.037
[0.101]
0.656*
[0.386]
0.452
[0.516]
-0.213
[0.794]
0.004
[0.606]
-0.375
[0.570]
-1.053**
[0.442]
-1.285**
[0.579]
-0.333
[0.506]
5.205***
[0.646]
428
343
0.0566

-1.486***
[0.376]
0.670*
[0.360]
-0.672*
[0.346]
0.041
[0.025]
-0.051
[0.109]
0.675
[0.413]
0.652
[0.570]
-0.489
[0.852]
-0.098
[0.642]
-0.363
[0.624]
-1.005**
[0.500]
-1.504**
[0.662]
-0.583
[0.544]
5.135***
[0.712]
365
294
0.0705

-1.569***
[0.411]
0.693*
[0.386]
-0.434
[0.374]
0.034
[0.027]
-0.12
[0.120]
0.329
[0.449]
0.977
[0.638]
-0.492
[0.852]
0.179
[0.723]
-0.288
[0.679]
-0.918*
[0.523]
-1.295*
[0.725]
-0.341
[0.581]
5.473***
[0.782]
314
257
0.073

-0.095
[0.291]
0.749**
[0.288]
-0.326
[0.277]
-0.01
[0.020]
-0.158*
[0.088]
0.142
[0.325]
-0.059
[0.503]
0.057
[0.639]
0.297
[0.507]
-0.071
[0.519]
-0.027
[0.389]
-0.644
[0.483]
-0.453
[0.429]
2.872***
[0.540]
104
33
0.0526

Firm size
Private firm
Retail
Mining
Transportation
Technology/communications
Services
Health
Other industries
Constant
Observations
Censored Observations
Pseudo R2

5.156***
[0.350]
428
343
0.0313

37

Table 7. Reasons for Insensitivity to Interest Rate Changes

Column 1 reports the reasons offered by respondents to the 2012:Q3 Duke/CFO Survey for choosing the
answer Its likely we would not change investment plans in response to an interest rate decrease to the
question By how much would your borrowing costs have to decrease to cause you to initiate, accelerate, or
increase investment projects next year? Responses are reported as a percent of the number of firms that
reported a reason for their insensitivity to interest rate decreases. Similarly, column 2 reports the reasons
offered for choosing no interest rate sensitivity to the corresponding question about interest rates increases.
Category of reason offered

(1)
Decrease in interest rates

(2)
Increase in interest rates

Interest rate already very low / Return on

investment much higher than interest rate

27%

11%

Ample funding from cash flow or stock / Debt is

not the marginal source of finance

32%

49%

Too much debt / Weak balance sheet

4%

1%

Lacking access to credit

2%

2%

Investment based on product demand / Based on

long-term plan, not current rates

17%

17%

Lack profit opportunities given demand / All

desired projects funded

10%

11%

High uncertainty

3%

1%

Firm is not capital intensive / Other

5%

7%

Number of firms offering reasons

286

141

Number of firms not offering reasons

81

57

Financing related

Non-financing related

38

Table 8. Reasons for Insensitivity to Interest Rate Changes by Expected Revenue

Growth Categories
Panel A reports the reasons offered by respondents to the 2012:Q3 Duke/CFO Survey for choosing the
answer Its likely we would not change investment plans in response to an interest rate decrease to the
question By how much would your borrowing costs have to decrease to cause you to initiate, accelerate, or
increase investment projects next year? Reponses are split by expected revenue growth categories (no
greater than 1%, greater than 1% but no greater than 5%, and greater than 5%). Similarly, Panel B reports
the reasons for choosing no changes in investment plans in response to an interest rate increase by expected
revenue growth categories. Percentages are computed over the number of firms that reported a reason for
insensitivity in the subsample of the column.
Panel A: Reasons for insensitivity to interest rate decreases
Category of reason offered

Expected
Expected revenue
Expected
revenue growth growth between revenue growth
1%
1% and 5%
> 5%

Interest rate already very low / Return on investment much

higher that interest rate

32%

28%

23%

Ample funding from cash flow or stock / Debt is not the

marginal source of finance

32%

30%

33%

Investment based on product demand / Based on long-term

plan, not current rates

12%

15%

19%

Other reasons

24%

27%

25%

68

61

119

Number of firms offering reasons

39

Table 8. Reasons for Insensitivity to Interest Rate Changes by Expected Revenue

Growth Categories (continued)
Panel B: Reasons for insensitivity to interest rate increases
Category of reason offered

Expected
Expected revenue
Expected
revenue growth growth between revenue growth
1%
1% and 5%
> 5%

Interest rate already very low / Return on investment much

higher that interest rate

21%

8%

10%

Ample funding from cash flow or stock / Debt is not the

marginal source of finance

56%

46%

45%

Investment based on product demand / Based on long-term

plan, not current rates

9%

19%

18%

Other reasons

14%

27%

27%

34

26

60

Number of firms offering reasons

40