We appraise the theoretical basis and the consequent empirical work of Frank Wolak in his study of the New Zealand Electricity market in a report to the New Zealand Commerce Commission released in March 2009. The report found no multilateral actions, but concluded there was evidence of market...

Evaluating the benefits of investment projects related to climate change is complicated by the disagreements surrounding key model inputs, especially the discount rate. It is widely believed that disagreement about the discount rate requires relaxing the threshold needed to justify investment,...

Share buybacks reduce taxes, commit managers to pay out free cash-flow, and send positive signals to investors. This paper shows that they also transfer wealth from shareholders to the owners of employee stock options and that this transfer increases the price needed to induce shareholders to...

In infrastructure industries the permitted revenue of a regulated firm depends crucially on the choice of rate base and the allowed rate of return. In this paper we examine the impact of these two variables on the timing of the regulated firm's investment. Since the firm bears all the cost of...

In this paper we develop a new approach to understanding the behavior of high frequency electricity spot prices. It treats electricity delivered at different times of the day as different commodities, while recognizing that these commodities may be traded on a small number of intra-day markets....

Despite being rejected by finance theory, payback continues to be widelyused as a method for evaluating capital investment projects. In situations where investment can be delayed, we show that the value of waiting to invest is an increasing function of payback period. Consequently, the optimal...

This paper presents a parsimonious model of a coastal locality's adaptation to rising sea levels and uses the model to examine cost-minimizing policies involving two complementary approaches. One involves irreversible investment in sea walls and similar infrastructure. The other involves...

This paper modifies the standard binomial option pricing approach to real options analysis so that it can incorporate learning options. These options allow a manager to gather information about a potential investment payoff prior to investment occurring. The project's overall volatility will...

A problem that often arises in applied finance is one where decision-makers need to choose a value for some parameter that will affect the cash flows between two parties, such as a rental rate or an exercise price. Because the values of the cash flows also depend on various unobservable...

Racehorse trainers operate asset management businesses in which the assets owned by outside clients compete with those owned by managers for the latter's time, care and attention. Although this potentially leads to serious conflicts of interest, we find no evidence of an agency problem: in a...