The internal rate of return (IRR) is often used by managers and practitioners for investment decisions. Unfortunately, it has serious flaws: (i) multiple real-valued IRRs may arise, (ii) complex-valued IRRs may arise, (iii) the IRR is, in general, incompatible with the net present value (NPV) in...

This paper introduces a new approach to understanding investment. The distinctive feature of our approach is that shocks to the economic fundamentals have both persistent and transitory components, and that firms must disentangle the persistent from the transitory shocks. The model generates...

We develop a dynamic model of firm investment under uncertainty that captures firms' risk attitude using quantile preferences. The firm maximizes its present value, defined as current profits and investment plus the discounted value of the τ-quantile of its value next period. In our framework,...

We solve a firm's investment problem when there is uncertainty about the growth rate of the project value and the investment cost, and the firm is ambiguity averse. We use a robust method to take this into account and provide explicit solution to the value of the option to invest. Ambiguity...

The average capital growth rate across firms declines sharply during a recession, and recovers only slowly. We provide a micro-founded explanation for this and several new stylized facts of investment asymmetry. Our investment model features various degrees of reversibility, cyclical...

Using detailed project-level data, we document a novel mechanism through which information externalities distort investment. Firms anticipate information spillover from peers’ investment decisions and delay project exercise to learn from their peers’ outcomes. To establish a causal...

The study investigates the role of financial development in boosting the investment efficiency of firms' investments in China. Using a large sample of firm-level financial data and country level economic data over the period 2004-2015, present study creates a link between financial and real...

In 2008 Clayton Christensen, Stephen Kaufman and Willy Shih pointed the accusatory finger of wrong investment decisions to: ill documented cost information, incorrect application of financial decision making tools and short termism. Given that we have little literature systematically documenting...

While the current European Central Bank deposit rate and 2-year German government bond yields are negative, the U.S. 2-year government bond and deposit rates are positive. Insights from Prospect Theory suggest that this situation may lead to an excess flow of funds into the United States. Yet...