IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bonedp/212006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A New Approach to the Irreversible Investment Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Su, Xia

Abstract

This paper solves the irreversible investment decision problem under uncertainty by a new real options method. It yields a Shadow Net Present Value rule such that the investment is triggered only when the shadow revenue of the investment reaches the investment cost. This paper hence corrects and extends the conventional Net Present Value (NPV) rule by figuring out the proper NPV of the investment. Meanwhile, the investment policy is shown to be correct and consistent with the real options theory since the shadow revenue records the economic value of the investment by deducting the option premium of waiting from the real revenue. This method allows for a generalization of the conventional analysis to all semi-martingale processes with deterministic or stochastic discount rates. Especially, we provide an explicit characterization of the threshold value when the uncertainty is specified as an exponential L´evy process. To highlight the significance of risk preferences on the decision rule, this paper also addresses the utility-based extension of the standard real option model. The investment policy in such a model is identified in the same form as that in the profit-maximization problem but signalled by the shadow utility process. The joint effect of risk aversion and jumps on the trigger value is analyzed through examples.

Suggested Citation

  • Su, Xia, 2006. "A New Approach to the Irreversible Investment Problem," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 21/2006, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bonedp:212006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/22966/1/bgse21_2006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pindyck, Robert S, 1988. "Irreversible Investment, Capacity Choice, and the Value of the Firm," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(5), pages 969-985, December.
    2. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    3. Robert McDonald & Daniel Siegel, 1986. "The Value of Waiting to Invest," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 707-727.
    4. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    5. L. Alili & A. E. Kyprianou, 2005. "Some remarks on first passage of Levy processes, the American put and pasting principles," Papers math/0508487, arXiv.org.
    6. Henderson, Vicky & Hobson, David G., 2002. "Real options with constant relative risk aversion," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 329-355, December.
    7. Bank, Peter & Föllmer, Hans, 2003. "American Options, Multi-armed Bandits, and Optimal Consumption Plans : A Unifying View," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 2003,46, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    8. Seung-Ryong Yang & B. Wade Brorsen, 1992. "Nonlinear Dynamics of Daily Cash Prices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 74(3), pages 706-715.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Neng, 2007. "Investment, consumption, and hedging under incomplete markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 608-642, December.
    2. Gabriel P. Mathy, 2020. "How much did uncertainty shocks matter in the Great Depression?," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 14(2), pages 283-323, May.
    3. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    4. Ferrari, Giorgio & Salminen, Paavo, 2016. "Irreversible Investment under Lévy Uncertainty: an Equation for the Optimal Boundary," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 530, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    5. Bulan, Laarni & Mayer, Christopher & Somerville, C. Tsuriel, 2009. "Irreversible investment, real options, and competition: Evidence from real estate development," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 237-251, May.
    6. Spiros H. Martzoukos & Nayia Pospori & Lenos Trigeorgis, 2024. "Corporate investment decisions with switch flexibility, constraints, and path-dependency," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 1223-1250, April.
    7. Masci, Martín Ezequiel, 2012. "Irreversibilidad e incertidumbre de las decisiones financieras en i&d [Irreversibility and uncertainty of the financial investments on r&d]," MPRA Paper 40970, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Caren Sureth, 2002. "Partially Irreversible Investment Decisions and Taxation under Uncertainty: A Real Option Approach," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 3(2), pages 185-221, May.
    9. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1046 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Blyth, William & Bradley, Richard & Bunn, Derek & Clarke, Charlie & Wilson, Tom & Yang, Ming, 2007. "Investment risks under uncertain climate change policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5766-5773, November.
    11. Schachter, J.A. & Mancarella, P., 2016. "A critical review of Real Options thinking for valuing investment flexibility in Smart Grids and low carbon energy systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 261-271.
    12. Frank Riedel & Xia Su, 2011. "On irreversible investment," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 607-633, December.
    13. Chuang-Chang Chang & Miao-Ying Chen, 2012. "Re-examining the investment-uncertainty relationship in a real options model," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 241-255, February.
    14. Lambrecht, Bart M., 2017. "Real options in finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 166-171.
    15. Lander, Diane M. & Pinches, George E., 1998. "Challenges to the Practical Implementation of Modeling and Valuing Real Options," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(3, Part 2), pages 537-567.
    16. Jan Vlachý, 2009. "Solving the Capacity Optimization Problem under Demand Uncertainty," Romanian Economic Journal, Department of International Business and Economics from the Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest, vol. 12(34), pages 97-116, (4).
    17. Westner, Günther & Madlener, Reinhard, 2012. "Investment in new power generation under uncertainty: Benefits of CHP vs. condensing plants in a copula-based analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 31-44.
    18. Giorgio Ferrari & Paavo Salminen, 2014. "Irreversible Investment under L\'evy Uncertainty: an Equation for the Optimal Boundary," Papers 1411.2395, arXiv.org.
    19. Bastian-Pinto, Carlos L. & Araujo, Felipe V. de S. & Brandão, Luiz E. & Gomes, Leonardo L., 2021. "Hedging renewable energy investments with Bitcoin mining," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    20. Feng Xu & Xin (Robert) Luo & Hongyun Zhang & Shan Liu & Wei (Wayne) Huang, 2019. "Do Strategy and Timing in IT Security Investments Matter? An Empirical Investigation of the Alignment Effect," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 21(5), pages 1069-1083, October.
    21. Ahlers, Oliver & Hack, Andreas & Kellermanns, Franz W., 2014. "“Stepping into the buyers’ shoes”: Looking at the value of family firms through the eyes of private equity investors," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 384-396.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Irreversible investment under uncertainty; Real options; Stochastic representation method; Utility; Risk aversion; Lévy processes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:bonedp:212006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsbonde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.