• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.1-40
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• 2007

We test a model of investment-cashflow-growth opportunities relationship in order to estimate the sensitivities to investments. In this study, we use a new proxy variable for the value of growth opportunities(hereafter "VGO"), which is based on the seminal papers of M&M(1958:1961:1963) and Lee(2006;2007). The empirical findings on the sensitivities of cashflow and growth opportunities are as follows. First, when the traditional proxy variables for the growth opportunities such as Tobin's Q, MBR and sales growth are included with the new proxy VGO in the estimation, their coefficients are turned out to be insignificant. Second, only the new proxy variable VGO shows a statistically significant positive sensitibity to investment, which can be regarded that the growth opportunities hold the positive influences to investments. Third, the Tobin's Q can be decomposed into three factors such as the value of growth opportunities(VGO), the value of asset-in-place and valuation errors. It turns out that only the VGO shows a statistically significant positive relationship with investment among others. This means that the new variable VGO is a good proxy variable for the growth opportunities in the investment-cashflow sensitivity analysis. In sum, thanks to the above findings in this study, we can say that it will not be proper to choose a proxy variable for the growth opportunities from the traditional set of proxies such as Tobin's Q, MBR, or sales growth rate.