The dynamic investment and exit decisions of venture capitals

This study develops a continuous time model to examine a complete two-stage decision process for venture capitals (VCs), including investment in the private market at Stage 1 and exit through IPO in the public market at Stage 2. Optimal timings, investment terms, and exit decisions are investigated using the real options game theory under two cases: the same required returns in the public and private markets and a higher required return in the private market than in the public market. Our results indicate that the same required returns in the public and private markets generate an optimal investment decision at Stage 1 without relation to the exit decision in Stage 2. However, when the required return in the private market is higher than that in the public market, the exit decision will influence the investment decision. The size of the initial capital, ownership structure, growth rate and risk of industry, required returns in public and private capital markets, extent of lock-up period price pressure, and transaction costs of financing are important factors influencing the equilibrium results.     

Measures for Sustainable Investment Decisions and Business Strategy – A Triple Bottom Line Approach

Traditionally, most investors have only taken economic variables (profitability and risk) into account when making investment decisions. In this paper we propose two measures, the Relative Sustainable Performance Measure (RSPM) and the Measure of Commitment‐failure (MC), that permit sustainable decision making, which takes environmental and social variables into consideration in addition to the economic variables, for both investors and companies themselves. This makes a triple bottom line (TBL) approach to investment decision making possible. We apply our measures to the worldwide chemical sector and validate them. Moreover, we propose a 2D graphical sustainability analysis, which is simple and easy for investors to understand when making investment decisions and can be used if they are concerned about environmental and social matters. It also enables companies to analyse their sustainability performance and adapt their business plans accordingly. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

‘I Like How You Think’: Similarity as an Interaction Bias in the Investor–Entrepreneur Dyad

Investigating the factors that influence venture capital decision‐making has a long tradition in the management and entrepreneurship literatures. However, few studies have considered the factors that might bias an investment decision in a way that is idiosyncratic to a given investor–entrepreneur dyad. We do so in this study. Specifically, we build from the literature on the ‘similarity effect’ to investigate the extent to which decision‐making process similarity (shared between the investor and the entrepreneur) might bias or otherwise impact the investor's evaluation of a new venture investment opportunity. Our findings suggest venture capitalists evaluate more favourably opportunities represented by entrepreneurs who ‘think’ in ways similar to their own. Moreover, in the presence of decision‐making process similarity, the impacts of other factors that inform the investment decision actually change in counter‐intuitive ways.     

对一类市场需求垄断厂商R&D投资决策的实物期权分析

本文运用实物期权方法,研究了面临不确定性市场需求的垄断性厂商投资决策,得到了投资决策点边界条件,并且发现市场垄断程度高,厂商将会延迟投资。     

Aqui No Se Habla Agencia.* An Examination of the Impact of Adverse Selection and Framing in Decision‐Making: a US/Mexico Comparison

US companies seeking cheaper labor or extraordinary returns have often seen foreign direct investment as a panacea. However, many of these companies founder on the horns of a control dilemma. While raw economic data such as labor rates prove to be true, productivity and decision‐making styles are so different that companies fail to maximize their investment returns. This situation is worsened as companies attempt to impose culturally inappropriate home country controls on their foreign investment. This study examines one of the potential sources of failure, escalation of commitment, which occurs when decision‐makers over‐commit incremental resources to failing investments without reasonable probability of recovery. This behavior has been widely documented in US domestic literature (see Whyte and Hook, 1997 , for a summary). However, there is also some evidence that such behavior is culturally bounded ( Chow et al., 1997; Sharp and Salter, 1997; Greer and Stephens, 2001 ). This study extends previous findings on cross‐cultural differences in decision‐making among managers by comparing the responses of managers in the USA and Mexico to an escalation of commitment exercise. The cross‐cultural validity of two US based theories, agency (adverse selection) and framing (prospect theory), is tested. The results indicate that at base Mexican managers were more risk seeking. However managers from the more individualistic USA were significantly more likely than Mexican managers to escalate in the presence of agency (adverse selection) based incentives. Negative framing among managers was universal in escalating commitment.     

Strategic real options under asymmetric information

This paper studies the effect of private information on the capital allocation decisions of firms who operate under imperfect competition. I analyze two interactive firms, one with private information and the other without, who must decide when to undertake an irreversible and uncertain investment decision. Traditional non-strategic models of irreversible investment under uncertainty involve a single decision maker and result in an optimal period of delay before the investment is undertaken. In a strategic setting, firms must balance their desire to delay against competitive advantages from early investment. I find that an equilibrium may not exist within the standard continuous framework when the private information is over revenues. Moreover, when an equilibrium does exist the competitive pressures from the uninformed firm are weak. This is in contrast to existing models with asymmetric information over costs, where an equilibrium always exists and the competitive pressures remain strong (Hsu and Lambrecht, 2007). This work shows that the investment timing decision, and thus the value of the private information, is highly sensitive to the nature of incomplete information.     

概率分布设定风险与投资选择

从主客观概率之争入手,结合现实金融资产投资中概率分布的不可知性,讨论金融资产投资分析中的概率分布设定风险,同时借用贝叶斯学习过程与序贯决策策略,探讨概率分布设定风险的控制与投资决策的优化。分析结论认为,基于贝叶斯分析的序贯决策,无论在提升期望收益方面,还是在控制概率分布设定风险方面都是有效的。     

Managerial overconfidence,overinvestment, and R&D spillover

This paper examines whether a firm will select an overoptimistic manager when a cost‐reduction investment has a spillover effect. We consider a Cournot competition model where R&D investment ex ante occurs before the process of product market competition. Our analysis reveals that there exists a unique and symmetric equilibrium for firms to delegate overoptimistic managers. We show that only when the spillover effect is sufficiently high do firms benefit from delegation. Furthermore, the equilibrium confidence level and investment decision first decrease and then increase as the spillover parameter changes. As the initial production cost increases, the equilibrium performance becomes worse.     

A multi-criteria expert decision system for investment decisions: The case of commercial real estate investments in China

Consistent with the rapid growth of the Chinese economy and its commercial real estate (CRE) market, evaluating CRE investments in China is becoming an important application area where a multi-criteria expert decision system can make a significant contribution. We used a multi-criteria expert decision system to evaluate ten actual CRE investments in China. Based on thirty-one industry experts, we identified key decision factors to consider when evaluating different CRE investment projects and determined their importance weights. We then evaluated whether or not the ten CRE investment projects were considered to be successful, taking into account the unique characteristics of each CRE investment project. We finally compared the evaluations for the ten cases with their actual performance using four different performance indicators. The results showed that the evaluations had at least 87.5% accuracy across four different performance indicators. As probably one of the first systematic and in-depth scholarly studies to evaluate CRE investment projects in China, this study contributes to a better understanding of such evaluations and helps CRE investors evaluate CRE investment projects in a more informed fashion.     

A dialectical theory of the decision to go to work: Bringing together absenteeism and presenteeism

The decision to not attend work (absenteeism) has been the focus of a great deal of inquiry; however, research is emerging on the importance of the decision to attend work when ill (presenteeism). Interestingly, despite being the outcome of the same decision, these constructs have developed relatively independently. We argue that absenteeism and presenteeism are strategies employees use to navigate the dialectical tensions in the supervisor–subordinate relationship. Thus, understanding the nature of those tensions, their context, and the strategies employed to manage the tensions can inform employees' decision to attend work.     

Overconfidence and Disappointment in Decision‐making under Risk: The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Overconfidence in economic decision‐making is a well‐established phenomenon; however, assessment of its scale and impact are largely absent from the literature. This paper uses Bell's disappointment metric to quantify its impact on individual decision‐makers in a risky investment setting. We are able to quantify the sensitivity of disappointment to overconfidence. We examine disappointment in both deterministic and stochastic models, finding that in the most likely cases, individual investors experience lower disappointment when variance is higher. We are also able to quantify and compare calibration‐based overconfidence and better‐than‐average overconfidence. Contrary to prior research, we find that their magnitudes are the same. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investment behavior under Knightian uncertainty – An evolutionary approach

The ‘as if ’ view of economic rationality defends the profit maximization hypothesis by pointing out that only those firms who act as if they maximize profits can survive in the long run. Recently, the problem of arriving at a logically consistent definition of rational behavior in games has shown that one must sometimes study explicitly the evolutionary processes that form the basis of this view. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of genetic programming as a tool for generating hypotheses about rational behavior in situations where explicit maximization is not well defined. We use an investment decision problem with Knightian uncertainty as a borderline test case, and show that when the artificial agents receive the same information about the unknown probability distributions, they develop behavior rules as if they were expected utility maximizers with Bayesian learning rules.     

A preliminary exploration of the effects of rational factors and behavioral biases on the managerial choice to invest in corporate responsibility

We explore a possible decision‐making process in which mixes of rational and non‐rational factors affect the choice made by a firm's management to invest in corporate responsibility. We propose that the rational factors affecting the decision‐makers' investment choice are: (a) moral choice; (b) risk management; (c) consequential changes that would be required in corporate structure or production processes; and (d) long‐term versus short‐term considerations. The non‐rational behavioral biases that we suggest affecting the decision‐makers' investment choice are: (a) attitude to risk, (b) status quo bias, (c) subjective discounting, and (d) myopic loss‐aversion. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

电力投资决策的期权博弈模型及其发展评述

电力投资决策对于电力企业甚至电力行业的发展有着举足轻重的作用,电力企业的投资选择是在外部环境竞争复杂性和不确定性的约束下进行的,需要研究复杂竞争环境和不确定因素条件下的投资决策方法。本文以电力投资决策模型分析入手,总结了电力投资决策模型的发展过程,探讨了电力投资的期权博弈模型发展过程、研究重点、缺陷、及发展方向,展示了电力投资决策期权博弈理论的发展脉络和思考重点。实践证明,该方法不仅能够对电力投资项目进行更加科学的而评估,还能够为电力行业的发展做出更加科学合理的决策。     

Improvisation for innovation: The contingent role of resource and structural factors in explaining innovation capability

This paper focuses on resource and structural factors to explore the relationship between organizational improvisation and innovation capability. Although the role of improvisation has attracted increasing academic attention in fast-changing environments, little is known about the conditions under which firms benefit from improvisation. This paper addresses this gap using an organizational learning perspective that explains the role of a firm's organizational structure and organizational resources for improvisation and innovation. A large-scale survey in China finds that firms vary in their levels of (I) centralization and formalization of decision making and (II) resource slack and investment irreversibility and that these factors moderate the relationship between improvisation and innovation capability in distinct ways. Consistent with our theorizing, improvisation enhances innovation capability when firms have a decentralized but formalized structure or pursue the dual goals of maximizing resource slack and minimizing investment irreversibility.     

滨城聚鑫房地产公司开发项目案例

本案例通过对聚鑫房地产公司遇到的项目开发难题进行分析，提出了三种意见，即立即开发、不可开发、观望后做决定。通过对项目收入、成本费用等各方面进行分析、计算，并对项目建成后的经济效果进行预测，帮助学员了解项目投资中需要注意的资本成本、投资风险和现金流量等问题，以把握项目投资的关键点。     

企业研发决策、政府资助方案及最优资助配比

本文对企业和政府在企业研发决策中研发组织方式进行了理论分析,研究了不同市场和不同决策下的政府的资助方案及最优资助配比。研究发现,在独立研发的情况下,封闭市场需要政府资助诱导企业私人研发的投入,且最优配比为1:2;出口导向型市场政府资助对企业私人研发的投入无诱导作用;进口导向型市场企业无需政府资助亦会进行私人研发投入。在产学研合作的情况下,封闭市场中支付学研机构的研发费用率k和政府资助s满足(1+s)(1-k)=1.5时达最优资助配比。     

房地产企业投资决策风险与可行性评估研究——以北京市某项目为例

影响房地产企业投资决策的风险因素很多,哪一种风险因素控制或处理不好,都会对整个房地产投资项目产生巨大的损失,本文以北京市某项目为例,运用市场调查法,指出该项目在投资决策中存在的主要风险,并就存在的风险提出有针对性的解决措施。     

股票交易的数学模型分析

股票投资要慎重决策,公司的基本面即公司的发展状况是股票价格的重要依据。用预测公司的每股利润的增长率来预测股价的未来走势,建立相关的数学模型,算出股价变动期望值与方差,依据数值的大小来决策买入卖出,这是较为可行的股票交易决策方法。同时也可参考成交量的变化来决策买入卖出的时机。