Showing 1 - 10 of 21
We study when and why firms exercise real options. Using detailed project-level investment data, we find that the likelihood that a firm exercises a real option is strongly related to peer exercise behavior. Peer exercise decisions are as important in explaining exercise behavior as variables...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479576
Academics, the media, and policymakers have all raised concerns about the implications of human workers being replaced by machines or software. Few have discussed the implications of the reverse: firms' ability to replace capital with workers. We show that this flexibility can help new firms...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479610
This article develops and implements a Real Option approach to value renewable natural resources in the case of Marine Fisheries. The model includes two sources of uncertainty: the resource biomass and the price of fish, and it can be used by fisheries to optimally adapt their harvesting...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012480792
We analyze the effectiveness of preventive investments aimed at increasing agents' life expectancy, with a focus on influenza and COVID-19 mitigation. Maximizing overall life expectancy requires allocating resources across hazards so as to equalize investments' marginal effectiveness. Based on...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481577
We study investment options in a dynamic agency model. Moral hazard creates an option to wait and agency conflicts affect the timing of investment. The model sheds light, theoretically and quantitatively, on the evolution of firms' dynamics, in particular the decline of the failure rate and the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012465063
We develop a new approach to dealing with real options problems with uncertain maturity. This type of situation is typical for R&D investments and mine or oil exploration projects. These types of projects are characterized by significant on-going investment costs until completion. Since time to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012465666
We examine the extent to which uncertainty delays investment and the effect of competition on this relationship using a sample of 1,214 condominium developments in Vancouver, Canada built from 1979-1998. We find that increases in both idiosyncratic and systematic risk lead developers to delay...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012466179
The real options framework has been used extensively to analyze the timing of investment under uncertainty. While standard real options models assume that agents possess a constant rate of time preference, there is substantial evidence that agents are very impatient about choices in the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012466627
Sunk costs play a central role in antitrust economics, but are often misunderstood and mismeasured. I will try to clarify some of the conceptual and empirical issues related to sunk costs, and explain their implications for antitrust analysis. I will be particularly concerned with the role of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467249
This paper provides a model of investment timing by managers in a decentralized firm in the presence of agency conflicts and information asymmetries. When investment decisions are delegated to managers, contracts must be designed to provide incentives for managers to both extend effort and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467537