Real Options is the term used to refer to the application of option pricing theory to the valuation of investments in non-financial or "real" assets where much of the value is attributable to flexibility and learning over time. A key problem with Real Options is that there are many different...

The valuation of multi-staged pharmaceutical R&D can be interpreted as a chain of real options. In valuing these compound option models, a crucial problem is how to deal with the different types of risk. Previous models, such as Cassimon et al. (2004), offer a closed-form solution for the...

We study a novel mechanism through which real options play a prominent role in inducing the skewness of stock returns. Building on the investment-based asset pricing framework, we show that firms’ real options to contract (expand) their businesses when productivity is low (high) can increase...

Avian flu has been the focus of significant attention since 2004, when there were reports of human infections in Asia from the avian flu H5N1 strain. To prevent the catastrophic mortality of mankind, several governments are stockpiling antivirals and pharmaceutical firms are increasing their...

Real option valuation has traditionally been concerned with investment under project value uncertainty while assuming the agent has perfect confidence in a specific model. However, agents do not generally have perfect confidence in their model and this {\it ambiguity} affects their decisions....

Growth options increase idiosyncratic skewness and reduce risk exposure, and thereby create the appearance of profitability, distress, lotteryness, and volatility anomalies, influencing their returns via the channel of idiosyncratic skewness. To capture these effects, we estimate expected...

We use a stochastic frontier model to obtain a stock-level estimate of the difference between a firm's installed production capacity and its optimal capacity. We show that this “capacity overhang” estimate relates significantly negatively to the cross-section of stock returns, even when...

We develop a real options model in which a firm exposed to seasonal variations in its output price is able to produce output, store it, and sell it later, separating the production and selling decisions. The model suggests that the optimal policy for a firm with low inventory costs is to spread...

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