Demand Uncertainty,Development Timing and Leasehold Land Valuation: Empirical Testing of Real Options in Residential Real Estate Development

This article develops and tests a long‐dated American call option pricing model for valuing development land under leasehold. We analyze and test option values in ten detailed Hong Kong cases involving purchase, holding, converting and developing land. We also test for optimal exercise of long‐dated American calls using processes based on the optimal trigger ratio feature of the perpetual American call option model. Generally, the empirical results confirm presence of a positive and nontrivial option premium (mean +5.274%) in the cases, and that developers appear to delay exercise to the point predicted by the real options model.     

A Review of: “STATISTICS OF EXTREMES” By Emil J. Gumbel Columbia University Press New York, 1958 375 pp. $15.00

Standard procedures for evaluating future cash flows are to find an appropriate discount rate consistent with the cash flow's risk and then to derive a present value. While discounted cash flows seem appropriate for many instances, finding appropriate discount rates is often difficult, or discount rates may not exist when the risk is actually a function of a decision that requires the cash-flow valuation. We consider two approaches that have been suggested to alleviate this problem: the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the risk-neutral pricing arguments from option theory. We discuss the assumptions inherent in these models and show the results on the well-known news vendor model. Our option pricing results correspond to Singhal's [17] results using CAPM and a different valuation procedure for the option pricing model. We, however, derive a simpler expression that clearly illustrates differences from the standard form ignoring risk.     

An option pricing approach to the valuation of rubber and palm oil producers

Advances in the option pricing literature have important implications for more basic valuation problems. An option pricing approach to the valuation of risky firms can accommodate uncertainty about product market conditions and managerial decisions more readily than a discounted cash flow approach. This paper adapts the stock option pricing approach of Black and Scholes (1973) to the valuation of shares of rubber and palm oil producers. A case study assesses the power of an option-based model to predict market share prices of a rubber and palm oil producer listed on the Stock Exchange of Singapore.     

Integrating Real Options with Managerial Cash Flow Estimates

This article presents a real options model that fits managerial cash flow estimates (optimistic, likely, and pessimistic projections) to a continuous geometric Brownian motion (GBM) cash flow process with changing growth and volatility parameters. The cash flows and the value of a project are correlated to a traded asset, so the real option is priced under the risk-neutral measure with a closed-form solution. The analysis is extended to a sequential compound call option for investments over multiple periods. If the project is correlated to the market, then some of the risk may be mitigated by a delta-hedging strategy. A numerical example shows that the effect of the correlated asset on the real option value is significant, and the relationship between the volatility of the project and the real option value is not analogous to the typical relationship found in financial option pricing. Integrating the expertise and industry knowledge of management, this approach makes possible a more rigorous estimation of model inputs for real option pricing.     

Mortgage Pricing: Some Provisional Empirical Results

We test some of the qualitative properties of mortgage pricing models. The models use option pricing techniques, focusing on prepayment as a call option. They imply a quite nonlinear relationship between mortgage price and coupon, interest rates and volatility. We test for both the first and second derivatives of the effects of these variables using data on Ginnie Mae mortgage backed securities. We find that the model is largely supported by the data.     

回收数量受价格和随机因素影响的定价模型

假设在再制造闭环供应链中,集中决策者、第三方和制造商分别从最终客户那里回收废旧品,其回收数量受回收价格和随机因素影响,制造商对获得的旧部件进行再制造,如果旧部件不能满足生产需求,制造商将从新部件供应商那里以高价格采购新部件来补充短缺。本文按照废旧品回收的供应链成员不同,建立了3个定价决策模型,证明了每个模型最优解的存在性和唯一性,然后在特殊情形下进一步求得各模型最优解的解析式,最后用具体算例对模型进行了验证。     

Experimenting to Learn about Demand in Duopoly with Forward‐Looking Consumers

Using a two‐period model, I show that competition between two symmetric duopolists trying to learn about unknown features of demand results in an informationally suboptimal process. Because a firm’s marginal return to price experimentation equals zero if the rival’s price is matched in the first period, myopic symmetric pricing arises in equilibrium even though a firm’s expected second‐period profit attains a local minimum. Furthermore, forward‐looking consumers suffer from ratcheting because their first‐period purchase decisions partly reveal their preferences, which exacerbates the informational suboptimality of the firms’ experimentation process without affecting their pricing. The role of firm asymmetries is also analyzed.     

Equilibrium Real Options Exercise Strategies with Multiple Players: The Case of Real Estate Markets

This article derives a closed-form solution for an equilibrium real options exercise model with stochastic revenues and costs for monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly and competitive markets. Our model also allows one option holder to have a greater production capacity than others. Under a monopolistic environment we find that the optimal option exercise strategy in real estate markets is dramatically opposite to that in a financial (warrant) market, indicating the importance of paying attention to the institutional details of the underlying market when analyzing option exercise strategies. Our model can be generalized to the pricing of convertible securities and capital investment decisions involving both stochastic revenues and costs under different types of market structures.     

Multiproduct retailing and consumer shopping behavior: The role of shopping costs

We empirically examine the role of shopping costs in consumer shopping behavior in a context of competing differentiated supermarkets that supply similar product lines. We develop and estimate a model of demand in which consumers can purchase multiple products from multiple stores in the same week, and incur transaction costs of dealing with supermarkets. We show that a similar model without shopping costs predicts a larger proportion of multistop shoppers and overestimates own-price elasticities and product markups. Further, we use our model along with a model of competition between supermarkets to study two practices that are commonly used by supermarkets: product delisting and loss-leader pricing. We show that the presence of shopping costs makes product delisting less profitable whereas it makes loss-leader pricing more profitable compared to a context in which consumers do not incur shopping costs.     

Cancellation Strategies in Commercial Real Estate Leasing

In a contractionary corporate environment, lease cancellation strategy becomes an important component of corporate real estate leasing decisions. This paper presents a leasing model in which less well-informed lessors offer leases with alternative lease cancellation options. The model demonstrates that a tenant's choice of cancellation option reveals his private information with respect to the likelihood of option exercise. Tenants who select a lease with a downsizing option are more likely to exercise the option. Given the higher likelihood of option exercise, the model suggests that the downsizing option will be priced higher. We examine a sample of 311 leases, and consistent with the model's prediction, we find that on average leases with a downsizing option have significantly higher contract rent. However, termination and sublet options are not associated with higher rent. The evidence suggests that market uncertainty, private information and adverse selection affect the pricing of alternative cancellation options and the choice of cancellation option.     

Reverse Mortgages: Contracting and Crossover Risk

A pricing model is developed for a reverse mortgage contract where the borrower receives payments either as a lump sum or in an annuity while the loan balance accumulates as a claim against the house. No underwriting criteria on income are applied. One risk of default is that the borrower will remain in the house after the negatively amortizing loan balance exceeds the value of the house. An explicit pricing model of the reverse mortgage permits the evaluation of this default "crossover" option. Alternative methods involving life insurance contracts and securitization are compared as secondary market channels.     

电网企业优化购电成本方法研究与实证分析

通过购电成本结构分析,指出了当前发电计划编制及执行中存在的问题和当前发电计划编制对电网购电费的影响。重点研究了有关降低电网购电成本的方法及实证,并为政府价格相关部门提出创建节能型社会的政策建议。     

Personalized pricing and price fairness

Mobile web technology enables discriminatory, or personalized, pricing for many more consumer good categories than has traditionally been the case. Setting prices according to individual valuations, however, generates adverse consumer reaction unless consumers are invited to participate in the price-formation process. Consumer perceptions of price fairness are key to the sustainability of any discriminatory pricing regime. Perceptions of price fairness, in turn, are hypothesized to be shaped by “self-interested inequity aversion” in which prices tend to be regarded as unfair, and purchase probabilities fall, if others are perceived to pay a lower price, while prices tend to be regarded as more fair, and consumers more likely to purchase, if inequity is in the buyers favor. Our experimental data also shows that the implications of inequity aversion for sellers can be at least partially reversed if consumers are allowed to participate in the price-formation process by negotiating the price they pay. The primary implication of our findings is that, in order to be viable, any system of discriminatory pricing for consumer goods should invite consumers to have a stake in the price they pay. Such participatory pricing may provide one way out of the current trap of Hi–Lo, or promotional, pricing that neither retailers nor manufacturers regard as sustainable.     

经理人股票期权价值的理论及应用

股票期权激励的研究和实践中广泛应用布莱克——斯科尔斯模型进行股票期权的公允价值计价,然而对经理人而言的股票期权价值还要考虑经理人的风险偏好、财富的多元化程度等因素的影响。经理人期权价值不等于公司期权成本的基本理论可以解决及解释在股票期权实践中的一些关键性问题,如期权激励有效性的衡量、激励期权的风险溢价、最优行权价的确定、行权时间的确定。该理论的应用对我国上市公司股权激励的实施也有重要启示。     

基于波动率指数的期权对冲策略研究

波动率指数反映了期权投资者对未来市场波动性的预期,被用作衡量市场风险的重要依据。试图应用波动率指数来构建一种风险收益特性类似于债券的期权投资策略,即寻找市场中隐含波动率较相应的波动率指数高估或低估的期权品种并进行建仓,再用标的现货使组合保持delta中性。最后采用香港恒生指数期权数据进行了实证分析,结果显示该策略具有一定的实用价值,对期权投资具有一定的参考意义。     

A review of: “ENGINEERING ECONOMY WITH COMPUTER APPLICATIONS”, by Dr. Arup K. Mnllik,Engineering Technology,Inc., Mahomet,Illinois, 1979, 289 pages,list 517.95.

This paper applies option pricing analysis to the problem of valuing the abandonment option of an investment proposal. The assumption is made that the abandonment option is exercisable at only one point in time in the future and that the project's vatue-in-use and its abandonment value are lognormally distributed. The model is employed to measure how the uniqueness of the project asset, as measured by the correlation between these two lognormal random variables, affects the value of the abandonment option. It is shown that the more unique the asset, or the higher the correlation, the lower is the value of the abandonment option. The model is also employed to examine the impact of increased uncertainty in these two random variables on the value of the abandonment option. The relationships are shown to be nonmonotonic. However, beyond critical thresholds, increased uncertainty in either one of the two variables enhances the value of the abandonment option.     

R&D as an option on market introduction

Discounted cash flow methods for making R&D investment decisions cannot properly capture the option value in R&D. Since market and technology uncertainties change expectations about the viability of many new products, the value of projects is frequently adjusted during the R&D stages. Capturing the adjustment in expectations has an option value that may significantly differ from the Net Present Value of R&D projects. However, there are no historic time series for estimating the uncertainty of the value of R&D projects. As a result, the standard Black and Scholes model for financial option valuation needs to be adjusted. The aim of this paper is to report the application of a particular option pricing model for setting the budget of R&D projects. The option value of the model captures jumps or business shifts in market or technology conditions. The approach originates from applying current insight into the valuation of R&D projects to the field of multimedia research at Philips Corporate Research. This way, the gap between real option theory and R&D practice is further diminished.     

An Analysis of the Ex Ante Probabilities of Mortgage Prepayment and Default

Observed mortgage prepayment and default rates have been far different than the ruthless option exercise rates predicted by contingent claims models of mortgage pricing. The discrepancies have been attributed to both the competing-risk nature of prepayment and default and to transactions costs. This paper tries a different means of reconciliation. We introduce a third stochastic process, household income, into the usual pricing model that includes only the spot interest rate and the house price. The presence of income allows considering consumption-theoretic determinants of termination. The role of mortgage underwriting rules in restricting optimal prepayment is also explicitly modeled. Numerical ex ante prepayment and default rates based on the theoretical model come much closer to historical experience.     

FHA Terminations: A Prelude to Rational Mortgage Pricing

Recent models of pricing mortgages and/or mortgage insurance have used option-pricing models as their framework. The focus is usually on default, which is viewed as a put option (to sell the house to the lender in exchange for the mortgage) and prepayment, which is viewed as a call option (to buy the mortgage from the lender). Analysis then uses techniques like those used to price options in capital markets. Unfortunately, homeowners do not seem to exercise their option as quickly as do traders in organized markets. We estimate prepayment and default functions, which are meant to be a first step in developing modified, option-based models of mortgage pricing.     

Hedging Forward Mortgage Loan Commitments: The Option of Futures and a Future for Options

The purpose of this paper is to analyze theoretically the problem of how mortgage lending institutions assume the interest rate risks inherent in the granting of fixed-rate mortgage loan commitments.
Two approaches to hedge this risk are analyzed. First, the use of the GNMA futures market is evaluated from the standpoint of how it might be used to hedge against mortgage commitment risks. Secondly, the use of an appropriate pricing model—the Black-Scholes option pricing model—is offered as a proxy for establishing the market value of a fixed-rate mortgage commitment. This model is extended and empirically estimated for several hypothetical environments.
The paper demonstrates a basic flaw in the GNMA futures market as a hedge against mortgage commitments. Once this is established, the use of the options pricing approach is offered as a more rational approach for hedging these risks.