We propose a parsimonious general equilibrium extension of the Black-Scholes economy that helps clarify how options' prices, expected returns, risk exposure, and optimal exercise policies respond to variations in the risk exposure of the underlying asset. The model allows one to separate the...

We study when and why firms exercise real options. Using detailed project-level investment data, we find that the likelihood that a firm exercises a real option is strongly related to peer exercise behavior. Peer exercise decisions are as important in explaining exercise behavior as variables...

We show how directors can set the strength of a firm's anti-takeover provisions in order to influence the investment-timing decision of a future empire-building CEO. The prospect of future hostile takeover attempts, which terminate the CEO's control benefits if successful, affects the CEO's...

Investments in climate-change adaptation will have to be made while the extent of climate change is uncertain. However, some important sources of uncertainty will fall over time as more climate data become available. This paper investigates the effect on optimal investment decision-making of...

Considering that the assumption of time consistency does not adequately reveal the mechanisms of exit decisions of venture capital (VC), this study proposes two kinds of time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., time-flow inconsistency and time-point inconsistency) to advance research in this field....

This paper investigates the effect of uncertainty on R&D investment. We find that firms invest more in R&D when they face higher uncertainty, as measured by idiosyncratic return volatility. We further show that the effect is more pronounced for firms in more competitive industries as well as for...

This paper discusses a selected literature on continuous-time option games models, providing new insights and extensions. The paper analyzes both symmetrical and asymmetrical duopoly under uncertainty, including issues like preemption, non-binding collusion, perfect-Nash equilibriums,...

This paper considers real options within a continuous-time corporate finance context. We analyze whether these real options are exercised effciently, and what the underlying sources of inefficiency are. In particular we consider the role of incomplete information, competition, search costs and...

We consider a problem where an uninformed principal makes a timing decision interacting with an informed but biased agent. Because time is irreversible, the direction of the bias crucially affects the agent's ability to credibly communicate information. When the agent favors late...

Stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility perform poorly relative to low idiosyncratic volatility stocks. We offer a novel explanation of this anomaly based on real options, which is consistent with earlier findings on idiosyncratic volatility (the positive contemporaneous relation between...