3 Analysis of Hungarian corporate investment using micro data

The second chapter of our Growth Report provided an overview of international developments in investment. It raised the question whether the low investment level in Europe and the United States is the consequence of the crisis or there are structural reasons behind it. It comes to the conclusion that – although the global decline in investment is fundamentally attributable to cyclical reasons – structural factors also contribute to the still moderate investment activity. The downturn following the crisis is mostly related to companies. Therefore, in this chapter we focus on Hungarian companies and present the heterogeneity of corporate investment before, during and after the crisis. The analysis is carried out on firm-level data, which allows an in-depth examination of the composition of and trends in corporate investment. The significant structural change characterising the Hungarian economy in the 1990s was mostly completed by the early 2000s. In parallel with that, companies’ investment rate (the ratio of their investment as a percentage of capital stock) also declined, and following the dynamic period of the second half of the 1990s, for most of the 2000s it was stagnant at a level higher than that of the euro area and lower than that of the countries of the region. Structural problems were already seen in the pre-crisis period: the share of expansionary investments was declining, and the share of companies that did not invest at all was rising. During the crisis, between 2009 and 2012, the investment rate dropped sharply. Signs of recovery were seen from 2013, but companies’ investment performance remains below the pre-crisis level. Historically, large companies account for about one half of Hungarian corporate investment. Investments are concentrated; on average, the 20 largest investment projects constitute one quarter of the total annual investment. Similar concentration is observed in the distribution of investment by corporate ownership and export status: foreign-owned companies carry out one half of total investment, while exporting companies implement 40 per cent. A duality is also observed in the impact of the crisis on investment. Large corporations’ major investment projects, and especially foreign-owned, exporting companies were less shaken by the crisis for demand reasons, and recovered more quickly than their counterparts. The composition of investment, the dominance of large, foreign-owned and export-oriented companies reflect the dual structure of the Hungarian economy, i.e. the coexistence of smaller companies that produce for the domestic market and operate with low efficiency and the competitive large companies that produce for export markets. This duality is also reflected in the changes over time in investment performance. The decline/stagnation observed in the pre-crisis investment rate is primarily the result of the declining investment rate of smaller firms and ones producing for the domestic market. Not only the investment performance of smaller (especially micro) companies declined, but in parallel with that the rise in their sales revenues also decelerated, and the ratio of firms moving up into higher size categories also decreased. The turning point was in 2013, when the transition to larges size categories strated to increase again. The increase in firm size is key, because this allows to exploit scale efficiencies, which can have major contribution to the long-run growth of the economy. The ageing of the sector played an important role in the weak investment performance of smaller firms. Irrespective of size, companies tend to invest more and grow faster in the years following their entry. However, while smaller firms invest less and less as they become older, ageing above a certain age results in no further deterioration in investment performance in the case of larger companies. This explains why ageing had a major negative effect on investment performance only in the case of smaller companies, although firms were growing older in every size categories in the period under review. It also leads to a decline in investment performance if the number and weight of newly established companies decreases, which, at the same time, also contributes to the ageing of the corporate sector. Traditionally, the contribution of new entrants to the investment rate is significant. The impact of new entrants is felt not only in the