Contrasts between classes of assets in fixed investment panel equations as a way of testing real option theory

This paper reports estimation of investment equations for two classes of fixed assets: plant & machinery and building for a large sample of UK manufacturing industries. It exploits the different degree of irreversibility that characterises these assets to test the power of real options theory to explain investment under uncertainty. Additionally, the paper uses a specially constructed industry-specific measure of irreversibility for plant and machinery investment to test for real options effects within that class of investment.