The consumption tax is imposed on the consumer, but it also affects the wealth of the producer because of the tax incidence effect: depending on supply and demand elasticity, the consumption tax reduces the market clearing price. Therefore it affects cash flows from corporate investment and...

We study games in which the decision to exercise an option is a signal of private information to outsiders, whose beliefs affect the utility of the decision maker. Signaling incentives distort the timing of exercise, and the direction of distortion depends on whether the decision-maker's utility...

We show that the value maximizing hurdle rate for Ramp;D is less than for conventional investment despite the fact that Ramp;D has development risk. Because development risk arises only during Ramp;D, entrepreneurs control this risk by pursuing or deferring Ramp;D. This risk management moderates...

Private companies (PCs) in restructured infrastructure industries, e.g., energy and transportation, determine facility investment timing and sizing. Such decisions maximize the PC's expected profit (rather than social welfare) under uncertainty. By anticipating the PC's incentives, a...

We examine how the market valuation of firms varies on account of characteristics that make them vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic across different stages of the crisis. Using plant location data that uniquely identify the vulnerability of firms to operational disruptions, we find that firms...

We find that business cycles drive productive economic churn. During recessions, firms with high previous abnormal investment scale back while firms with low abnormal investment scale up. These findings are consistent with an improvement in investment efficiency over the business cycle. Our...

This paper uses contingent claims analysis to investigate the staging decision of a venture capitalist in a principal-agent framework. Venture capital investment opportunities are modeled as real options with multiple volatilities, and the entrepreneur's incentive is assumed to maximize the...

This paper considers the impact of uncertainty and investment cost asymmetry on the value and optimal real option exercise strategies of firms under imperfect competition. Both firms have an opportunity to invest in a project enhancing (ceteris paribus) the profit flow. We show that three types...

This paper generalizes the theory of irreversible investment under uncertainty by allowing for risk averse investors in the absence of complete markets. Until now this theory has only been developed in the cases of risk neutrality, or risk aversion in combination with complete markets. We...

In this paper the impact of policy change on the investment behavior of the firm is studied. The change occurs when a stochastic process describing the state of the economic environment reaches a certain trigger. In our setting both the firm's conjecture concerning the trigger as well as the...