Learning to Wait: A Laboratory Investigation

Human subjects decide when to sink a fixed cost "C" to seize an irreversible investment opportunity whose value "V" is governed by Brownian motion. The optimal policy is to invest when "V" first crosses a threshold "V"* = (1 + "w"*)"C", where the wait option premium "w"* depends on drift, volatility, and expiration hazard parameters. Subjects in the Low "w"* treatment on average invest at values quite close to optimum. Subjects in the two Medium and the High "w"* treatments invested at values below optimum, but with the predicted ordering, and values approached the optimum by the last block of 20 periods. Copyright Copyright © 2009 The Review of Economic Studies Limited.