We construct a comprehensive panel data of 96 publicly traded European utilities over the period 1994-2005 in order to study the relationship between the capital structure of regulated firms, regulated prices, and investments, and examine if and how this interaction is affected by ownership...

This paper examines the investment and financial decisions of a sample of 92 EU regulated utilities, taking into account key institutional features of EU public utilities, such as: a) regulation by agencies with various degrees of independence; b) partial ownership of the state in the regulated...

This paper analyzes incentives for polluting firms to exchange abatement cost information under the non-linear pollution tax scheme (‘differential tax’) introduced by Kim and Chang [J. Regul. Econom. 5, 1993, 193-197]. It shows that polluting firms have - under mild conditions - an incentive...

We study the problem of an investor that buys an equity stake in an entrepreneurial venture, under the assumption that the former cannot monitor the latter’s operations. The dynamics implied by the optimal incentive scheme is rich and quite different from that induced by other models of...

Endogenous Uncertainty is that component of economic risk and market volatility which is propagated within the economy by the beliefs and actions of agents. The theory of Rational Belief (see Kurz [1994]) permits rational agents to hold diverse beliefs and consequently, a Rational Belief...

Two agents are engaged in a joint activity that yields a common perperiod payoff at two rounds of play. The expert announces the probability that the current state of the world is low, instead of high, at each stage. Having received the report of the expert, the decision-maker takes action at...

“Time to build” models of investment expenditures play an important role in many traditional and modern theories of the business cycle, especially for explaining the dynamic propagation of shocks. We estimate the structural parameters of a time-to-build model using firm-level investment data...

In this article we analyse the effects of different regulatory schemes (price cap and profit sharing) on a firm’s investment of endogenous size. Using a real option approach in continuous time, we show that profit sharing does not affect a firm’s start-up decision relative to a pure price...

The main aim of the paper is to highlight the relation between flexibility and vertical integration. To this purpose, we go through the selection of the optimal degree of vertical disintegration of a flexible firm which operates in a dynamic uncertain environment. The enterprise we model enjoys...

Recent developments in investment research have highlighted the importance of non-convexities and irreversibilities in the firms’ adjustment of quasi-fixed inputs. However, aggregation across capital goods may smooth out the discontinuities associated with the adjustment of individual assets....