Conventional wisdom holds that dependence among geological prospects increases exploration risk. However, dependence also creates the option to truncate exploration if early results are discouraging. We show that the value of this option creates incentives for explorationists to plunge into...

We consider the impact of sequential investment and active management on the value of a portfolio of real options. The options are assumed to be interdependent, in that exercise of any one is assumed to produce, in addition to some intrinsic value based on an underlying asset, further...

Any investor in assets that can be exploited sequentially faces a tradeoff between diversification and concentration. Loading a portfolio with correlated assets has the potential to inflate variance, but also creates information spillovers and real options that may augment total return and...