The effect of cutting interest rates on corporate investments: A real options model

Abstract

We propose a real options model with regime shifts to investigate the effect of cutting interest rates on corporate investments when a financial crisis occurs. Cutting interest rates would lower the investment project's hurdle rate. The reduction in hurdle rate is positively related to the magnitude of interest rate cuts and the persistence of the financial crisis. The hurdle rate becomes lower in the financial crisis state because the reduction in interest rate would lower the cost of capital and the opportunity cost of immediate investment. In the numerical analysis of this study, we show that the change in the opportunity cost accounts for most of the change in the hurdle rate. Upon taking into consideration the firm's financing constraints, we find that cutting interest rates accelerates investments for firms with high liquidity. However, for firms with low liquidity, the optimal investment threshold is not affected by the variation in interest rates. Instead, the investments of low-liquidity firms are affected by the change in the friction of credit supply.