We document novel facts about the U.S. stock market during the past forty years which show opposing characteristics to the prior decades: A negative cross-sectional correlation between firms' investment and profitability, and strong premia of investment and profitability factors which are...

This paper studies optimal debt maturity in an economy with repayment enforcement frictions and investors disagree about repayment probabilities. The optimal debt maturity choice is a mix of long- and short-term debt securities. Spreading risky debt claims on cash flows over time allows debt to...

Evaluating an industrial opportunity often means to engage in financial modelling which results in estimation of a large amount of economic and accounting data, which are then gathered in an economically rational framework: the pro forma financial statements. While the standard net present value...

This paper outlines two potential approaches to incorporating business taxation and allowances into a model of a firm to determine the effect of tax policy changes on the firm's behaviour. Following Auerbach, King and Benge, we first develop a model in which the firm maximises the value of its...

The existing real options literature explains the value premium as a consequence of either operating leverage raising risk in low-demand states or industry-wide investment lowering risk in high-demand states. This paper presents a simple model in which a value premium arises solely from capacity...

Evaluating an industrial opportunity often means to engage in financial modelling which results in estimation of a large amount of economic and accounting data, which are then gathered in an economically rational framework: the pro forma financial statements. While the standard net present value...

This paper presents an economic interpretation of the optimal “stopping” of perpetual project opportunities under both certainty and uncertainty. Prior to stopping, the expected rate of return from delay exceeds the rate of interest. The expected rate of return from delay is the sum of the...

A healthy financial system encourages the efficient allocation of capital and risk. The collapse of the house price bubble led to the financial crisis that started in 2007. There is a large empirical literature concerning the relation between asset price bubbles and financial crises. I evaluate...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...

This interdisciplinary paper explains how mathematical techniques of stochastic optimal control can be applied to the recent subprime mortgage crisis. Why did the financial markets fail to anticipate the recent debt crisis, despite the large literature in mathematical finance concerning optimal...