This work analyzes the problem of delegated decision-making within firms when investment projects are characterized by the possibility to make subsequent decisions after the initial investment decision has been made. By analyzing this question, the monograph combines and unifies two important lines of literature: on the one hand the literature on controlling investment decisions, on the other hand the investment valuation literature.
In the standard real options approach to investment, the owner of the option decides when to exercise the investment option. However, in many real-world settings, investment decisions are delegated to managers. This article provides a model of optimal contracting in a continuous-time principal-agent setting in which there is both moral hazard and adverse selection. We show that the underlying option can be decomposed into two components: A manager's option and an owner's option. The specification of the manager's option is determined by a compensation contract, and must provide an incentive for the manager to both extend effort and to exercise as close to the value-maximizing stopping time as possible. The residual option payout goes to the owner. The implied investment behavior differs significantly from that of the first-best no-agency solution. In particular, there will be greater inertia in investment, in that the model leads to the manager having an even greater quot;option to waitquot; than the owner. The interplay between the twin forces of hidden information and hidden action leads to markedly different investment outcomes than when only one of the two forces is at work.
Randall B, Lowe Piper & Marbury, L.L.R The issue of costing and pricing in the telecommunications industry has been hotly debated for the last twenty years. Indeed, we are still wrestling today over the cost of the local exchange for access by interexchange and competitive local ex change carriers, as well as for universal service funding. The U.S. telecommunications world was a simple one before the emergence of competition, comprising only AT&T and independent local exchange carriers. Costs were allocated between intrastate and interstate jurisdictions and then again, between intrastate local and toll. The Bell System then divided those costs among itself (using a process referred to as the division of revenues) and independents (using a process called settlements). Tolls subsidized local calls to keep the politi cians happy, and the firm, as a whole, covered its costs and made a fair return. State regulators, however, lacked the wherewithal to audit this process. Their con cerns centered generally on whether local rates, irrespective of costs, were at a po litically acceptable level. Although federal regulators were better able to determine the reasonableness of the process and the resulting costs, they adopted an approach of "continuous surveillance" where, like the state regulator, the appearance of rea sonableness was what mattered. With the advent of competition, this historical costing predicate had to change. The Bell System, as well as the independents, were suddenly held accountable.
The study of investment under uncertainty was stagnant for several decades until developments in real options revitalized the field. The topics covered in this book include the reasons behind the under-investment programme.
Examines the ways in which real options theory can contribute to strategic management. This volume offers conceptual pieces that trace out pathways for the theory to move forward and presents research on the implications of real options for strategic investment, organization, and firm performance.
This thesis consists of two essays that examine several problems in corporate finance and mechanism design. The central theme is endogenous agency conflicts and their impact on dynamic investment decisions. The first essay features auctions of assets and projects with embedded real options, and subsequent exercises of these investment options. The essay shows timing and security choice of auctions endogenously misalign incentives among agents and derives the optimal auction design and exercise strategy. The second essay studies implications of endogenous learning on irreversible investment decisions, in particular, how learning gives rise to asymmetric information between managers and shareholders in decentralized firms. Depending on the quality of the project, the optimal contract between principal and agent distorts investments in ways that has not been examined in the literature. Specifically, in Chapter 1 of the dissertation, I study how governments and corporations auction real investment options using both cash and contingent bids. Examples include sales of natural resource leases, real estate, patents and licenses, and start-up firms with growth options. I incorporate both endogenous auction initiation and post-auction option exercise into the traditional auctions framework, and show that common security bids create moral hazard because the winning bidder's real option differs from the seller's. Consequently, investment could be either accelerated or delayed depending on the security design. Strategic auction timing affects auction initiation, security ranking, equilibrium bidding, and investment; it should be considered jointly with security design and the seller's commitment level. Optimal auction design aligns investment incentives using a combination of down payment and royalty payment, but inefficiently delays sale and investment. I also characterize informal negotiations as timing and signaling games in which bidders can initiate an auction and determine the forms of bids. I show that post-auction investments are efficient and bidding equilibria are equivalent to those of cash auctions. However, in this setting, bidders always initiate the informal auctions inefficiently early. In addition, I provide suggestive evidence for model predictions using data from the leasing and exploration of oil and gas tracts, which leads to several ongoing empirical studies. Altogether, these results reconcile theory with several empirical puzzles and imply novel predictions with policy relevance. In Chapter 2, I examine learning as an important source of managerial flexibility and how it naturally induces information asymmetry in decentralized firms. Timing of learning is crucial for investment decisions, and optimal strategies involve sequential thresholds for learning and investing. Incentive contracts are needed for learning and truthful reporting. The inherent agency conflicts alter investment behavior significantly, and are costly to investors and welfare. But contracting on learning restores efficiency with low future uncertainty or sufficient liquidity. Unlike prior studies, the moral hazard of learning accelerates good projects and delays bad projects. Even the best type's investment is distorted, and only when learning is contractible can adverse selection dominate learning.
Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die kapitalbezogenen Aspekte von Investitionen im regulierten Energiesektor, wobei der Fokus auf dem elektrischen Übertragungsnetz liegt. Eine grundlegende Prämisse ist hierbei die "Endogenität des Risikos," wonach das Risikoprofil einer regulierten Investition von den Spezifikationen des regulatorischen Marktdesigns abhängt, durch welches stochastische Kosten und Einnahmen unter den beteiligten Stakeholdern - den Investoren, Konsumenten und Steuerzahlern - aufgeteilt werden. Das übergreifende Konzept ist ein multidimensionales regulatorisches Risiko-Framework, welches eine systematische Beurteilung des Einflusses von stochastischen Risiken auf den Marktwert und Cashflow von regulierten Unternehmen ermöglicht. Gemäss den Dimensionen des Risiko-Frameworks werden die einzelnen Risiken nach ihren systematischen und symmetrischen Eigenschaften sowie nach deren finanziellen Auswirkungen auf das regulierte Unternehmen charakterisiert. Auf Grundlage der konzeptionellen Aufarbeitung und einer umfassenden bibliografischen Übersicht über die vorhandene wissenschaftliche Literatur werden neue Forschungsansätze entwickelt, welche sich mit den identifizierten analytischen und empirischen Forschungslücken befassen: Erstens erlaubt eine kapitalmarktbasierte Kennzahl für das implizierte systematische Risiko, welches auf Basis fundamentaler Bewertungsmodelle und Marktpreise errechnet werden kann, eine robuste Schätzung der Kapitalkosten von börsennotierten Übertragungsfirmen. Eine auf diesem Ansatz beruhende Anpassung der erlaubten Rendite könnte ein wertvolles selbstkorrigierendes Instrumentarium für Regulatoren darstellen. Zweitens ergibt die Analyse einer hypothetischen grenzüberschreitenden Übertragungsleitung zwischen Polen und Österreich, welche aufgrund stündlicher Spotpreise an den jeweiligen Strombörsen durchgeführt wurde, eine Schätzung des systematischen Risikos nahe Nul.
Some recent studies offer strong theoretical support for the use of residual income as the key performance measure in managerial compensation contracts. In particular, they show that such contracts can induce a better informed manager to make decisions about quot;normalquot; investment projects that are optimal from the perspective of a firm's owner. The present paper studies whether these results carry over to situations involving decisions about both the creation of new and the exercise of already existing real options. For some special cases, this is straightforwardly possible, although the resulting depreciation schedules strongly deviate from depreciation schedules used in practice. In more general settings, the results do not persist and over- and under-investment problems cannot be avoided. To alleviate these problems a contingent depreciation schedule is introduced that goes a long way towards a goal-congruent solution for many situations. However, this depreciation schedule deviates even stronger from methods actually applied by firms. These results contribute to the existing literature in two ways: On the one hand, they enhance our knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of accounting-based incentive schemes. On the other hand, they illustrate the difficulties of designing incentive contracts for real options situations. Practically applied methods appear to be less useful for such situations than for situations involving quot;normalquot; investment projects.
Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security is an ideal volume for professionals in academia, industry and government interested in the rapidly evolving area at the nexus between energy and climate change policy. The cutting-edge international contributions allow for a wide coverage of the topic. Analytical Methods for Energy Diversity and Security focuses on the consideration of financial risk in the energy sector. It describes how tools borrowed from financial economic theory, in particular mean-variance portfolio theory, can provide insights on the costs and benefits of diversity, and thus inform investment decision making in conditions of uncertainty. It gives the reader an in-depth understanding of how to manage risk at a time when the world’s focus is on this area. The book provides insights from leading authorities in the area of energy security. It gives readers abundant, rigorous analysis and guidance at a critical time in facing the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. The book also highlights the role of clean energy technology in moving towards future diverse and intelligent electricity systems. It will be a trusted, first point of reference for decision-makers in the field of energy policy. The book includes a foreword by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner. All royalties from sale of this book will be donated to charities working in the energy sector in the developing world. Theoretical underpinning and applied use of Portfolio theory in the energy sector In-depth consideration of risk Contributions from leading international energy economists Innovative methodologies for thinking about energy security and diversity
Comprehensive in scope, Real Options reviews current techniques of capital budgeting and details an approach (based on the pricing of options) that provides a means of quantifying the elusive elements of managerial flexibility in the face of unexpected changes in the market. In the 1970s and the 1980s, developments in the valuation of capital-investment opportunities based on options pricing revolutionized capital budgeting. Managerial flexibility to adapt and revise future decisions in order to capitalize on favorable future opportunities or to limit losses has proven vital to long-term corporate success in an uncertain and changing marketplace. In this book Lenos Trigeorgis, who has helped shape the field of real options, brings together a wealth of previously scattered knowledge and research on the new flexibility in corporate resource allocation and in the evaluation of investment alternatives brought about by the shift from static cash-flow approaches to the more dynamic paradigm of real options—an approach that incorporates decisions on whether to defer, expand, contract, abandon, switch use, or otherwise alter a capital investment. Comprehensive in scope, Real Options reviews current techniques of capital budgeting and details an approach (based on the pricing of options) that provides a means of quantifying the elusive elements of managerial flexibility in the face of unexpected changes in the market. Also discussed are the strategic value of new technology, project interdependence, and competitive interaction. The ability to value real options has so dramatically altered the way in which corporate resources are allocated that future textbooks on capital budgeting will bear little resemblance to those of even the recent past. Real Options is a pioneer in this area, coupling a coherent picture of how option theory is used with practical insights in into real-world applications.
This textbook provides an introduction to environmental finance and investments. The current situation raises fundamental questions that this book aims to address. Under which conditions could carbon pricing schemes contribute to a significant decrease in emissions? What are the new investment strategies that the Kyoto Protocol and the emerging carbon pricing schemes around the world should promote? In the context of carbon regulation through emission trading schemes, what is the trade-off between production, technological changes, and pollution? What is the nature of the relation between economic growth and the environment? This book intends to provide students and practitioners with the knowledge and the theoretical tools necessary to answer these and other related questions in the context of the so-called environmental finance theory. This is a new research strand that investigates the economic, financial, and managerial impacts of carbon pricing policies.
