IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpgt/0510002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

More on Bernanke's “Bad News Principle”

Author

Listed:
  • Yishay D. Maoz

    (University of Haifa)

Abstract

The role that Bernanke’s Bad News Principle plays in the modern theory of investment under uncertainty is analyzed. The analysis shows that the actual investment dilemma is that by delaying investment firms trade off a higher present value of earnings for a lower present value of the investment cost, in contrast to previous interpretations of this dilemma. The economic interpretation of the Smooth Pasting Condition is clarified too: it represents the trade-off mentioned above. I also show that investment triggers may stay intact despite changes in the profit process, if the changes are restricted to the range of sufficiently high profits.

Suggested Citation

  • Yishay D. Maoz, 2005. "More on Bernanke's “Bad News Principle”," General Economics and Teaching 0510002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpgt:0510002
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/get/papers/0510/0510002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Bar-Ilan, Avner & Strange, William C, 1996. "Investment Lags," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 610-622, June.
    3. Tarun Sabarwal, 2005. "The non-neutrality of debt in investment timing: a new NPV rule," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 433-445, October.
    4. Dixit, Avinash K, 1989. "Entry and Exit Decisions under Uncertainty," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 620-638, June.
    5. Pindyck, Robert S, 1991. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1110-1148, September.
    6. Dumas, Bernard, 1991. "Super contact and related optimality conditions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 675-685, October.
    7. Dixit, Avinash & Pindyck, Robert S & Sodal, Sigbjorn, 1999. "A Markup Interpretation of Optimal Investment Rules," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(455), pages 179-189, April.
    8. Sodal, Sigbjorn, 1998. "A simplified exposition of smooth pasting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 217-223, February.
    9. Dixit, Avinash, 1991. "Irreversible Investment with Price Ceilings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(3), pages 541-557, June.
    10. Drazen, Allan & Sakellaris, Plutarchos, 1999. "News About News: Information Arrival and Irreversible Investment," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(3), pages 451-462, September.
    11. Kongsted, Hans Christian, 1996. "Entry and exit decisions under uncertainty: The limiting deterministic case," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 77-82, April.
    12. repec:cup:macdyn:v:3:y:1999:i:3:p:451-62 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Dixit, Avinash, 1991. "A simplified treatment of the theory of optimal regulation of Brownian motion," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 657-673, October.
    14. Avinash Dixit, 1992. "Investment and Hysteresis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 107-132, Winter.
    15. John V. Leahy, 1993. "Investment in Competitive Equilibrium: The Optimality of Myopic Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(4), pages 1105-1133.
    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. Andrew B. Abel & Avinash K. Dixit & Janice C. Eberly & Robert S. Pindyck, 1996. "Options, the Value of Capital, and Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 753-777.
    2. Andrew B. Abel & Avinash K. Dixit & Janice B. Eberly & Robert S. Pindyck, "undated". "Options, the Value of Capital, and Investment," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 15-95, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    3. Kogan, Leonid, 2001. "An equilibrium model of irreversible investment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 201-245, November.
    4. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Printzis, Panagiotis, 2020. "What is the investment loss due to uncertainty?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    5. Tsekrekos, Andrianos E., 2010. "The effect of mean reversion on entry and exit decisions under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 725-742, April.
    6. Yu, Jing & Xu, Bin, 2011. "The game analyses to price the target enterprise of merger and acquisition based on the perspective of real options under stochastic surroundings," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 1587-1594, July.
    7. Jens, Candace E., 2017. "Political uncertainty and investment: Causal evidence from U.S. gubernatorial elections," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 563-579.
    8. Abel, Andrew B. & Eberly, Janice C., 1999. "The effects of irreversibility and uncertainty on capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 339-377, December.
    9. Bar-Ilan, Avner & Sulem, Agnes & Zanello, Alessandro, 2002. "Time-to-build and capacity choice," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 69-98, January.
    10. 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.
    11. Sødal, Sigbjørn, 2001. "Entry, Exit And Scrapping Decisions With Investment Lags: A Series Of Investment Models Based On A New Approach," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt7wg8z42b, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    12. Joachim Gahungu and Yves Smeers, 2012. "A Real Options Model for Electricity Capacity Expansion," RSCAS Working Papers 2012/08, European University Institute.
    13. Hartwick, John M., 1995. "Capital gains and asset switching," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 63-67, January.
    14. GAHUNGU, Joachim & SMEERS, Yves, 2011. "A real options model for electricity capacity expansion," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011044, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    15. Wang, Tan, 2001. "Equilibrium with new investment opportunities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(11), pages 1751-1773, November.
    16. Alvarez, Luis H.R., 2011. "Optimal capital accumulation under price uncertainty and costly reversibility," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 1769-1788, October.
    17. Mario Ekboir, Javier, 1997. "Technical change and irreversible investment under risk," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 16(1), pages 55-65, March.
    18. El-Shazly Alaa, 2004. "Investment Under Uncertainty in Egypt: A Real-Options Approach," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 2(2), pages 51-60, August.
    19. Turvey, Calum G., 2002. "Can Hysteresis And Real Options Explain The Farmland Valuation Puzzle?," Working Papers 34131, University of Guelph, Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    20. Robert S. Pindyck & Andrés Solimano, 1993. "Economic Instability and Aggregate Investment," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1993, Volume 8, pages 259-318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Investment; Uncertainty; Option Value; Competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D41 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Perfect Competition
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wpa:wuwpgt:0510002. 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: EconWPA (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.