Textbook treatments of the lease versus purchase decision

A survey of textbooks from agricultural economics and finance reveals agreement among the texts that the lease versus purchase decision should be based on a comparison of the present values of the after‐tax cash flows associated with leasing versus purchasing. However, the texts disagree about the discount factor and cash flows that should be used in the analysis. Most agricultural economics texts recommend discounting by the “cost of capital” while most finance texts recommend discounting by the after‐tax cost of borrowed funds. Texts from both agricultural economics and finance disagree about the timing of lease payment tax shields.