This paper studies the aggregate implications of microeconomic investment irreversibility and idiosyncratic uncertainty in a simple growth model by highlighting real option effects. We endogenize the drift rate of real option by connecting it to the state of the economy. Thereby, we extend the...

There is wide debate over the impact of uncertainty on firm behavior, due to the difficulty both of measuring uncertainty and of identifying causality. This paper takes three steps that attempt to address these challenges. First, we develop an instrumental variables strategy that exploits firms'...

Many economic variables of interest exhibit a tendency to revert to predictable long-run levels. However, mean reverting processes are rarely used in investment models in the literature. In most models, geometric Brownian motion processes are used for tractability. In this paper, a firm's entry...

The conventional wisdom that housing prices are the present value of future rents ignores the fact that unlike dividends on stocks, rent is not discretionary. Housing price uncertainty can affect household property investments, which in turn affect rent. By extending the theory of investment...

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 cap...

In this study, we experimentally analyze the investment behavior of smallholder farmers in Uganda. We consider a problem of optimal stopping, stylizing an option to invest in a project. We ascertain whether, and to what extent, the real options approach and the classical investment theory can...

Kazakhstan and Germany have different development levels of the agricultural sectors. One of the explanations for this fact might be the different investment behavior of farmers in the two countries. We experimentally analyze whether the investment behavior of farmers is consistent with the...

The real options tradition originally predicted a decreasing relationship between uncertainty and investment, through the positive effect of higher uncertainty on the trigger level for revenue relative to costs. An opposing effect on the probability of reaching the level has been identified,...

This paper shows that, contrary to common beliefs, the real options effect of uncertainty plays no role in the long run rate of investment. This is proven for both the standard investment model with Cobb-Douglas production and Brownian motion demand, and also for a broader class of models with...

In this paper, we extend the usual models of irreversible investment under uncertainty by introducing the stock of public capital as an input for the private sector. Public investment takes place in a stochastic environment. Public capital then increases the productivity of private capital which...