Are efficient firms motivated to invest ? : evidence of manufacture of motor vehicles in Czech Republic

A sample of 24 representative firms in the Czech economy is a subject of a study for their technical efficiency and, subsequently, for their willingness to invest. The former concept is accomplished with the help of the frontier production function. The latter one is based on the value of Tobin’s Q, defined as the ratio of the market value of business capital assets to their replacement value; if it is greater than one, Q indicates the profitability of further investment. The analysed firms differ in their technical performance, but all of them are profitable and this might be their motivation to invest. A comparison of technical efficiency and Tobin’s Q as two evaluations follows under a hypothesis that one of them matches the other one. Applying the Passing–Bablok method, the finding is that those two items are not interchangeable in spite of a high correlation.