Ranking investment projects

Summary. This paper describes conditions under which one investment project dominates a second project in terms of net present value, irrespective of the choice of the discount rate. The resulting partial ordering of projects has certain similarities to stochastic dominance. However, the structure of the net present value function leads to characterizations that are quite specific to this context. Our theorems use Bernstein's (1915) innovative results on the representation and approximation of polynomials, as well as other general results from the theory of equations, to characterize the partial ordering. We also show how the ranking is altered when the range of discount rates is limited or the rate varies period by period. Received: January 5, 2002; revised version: October 29, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We thank Robert Driskill, Andrea Maneschi, Roy Radner, and participants of seminars at NYU, Notre Dame, Purdue, and Washington University for helpful comments. The present version of the paper has benefited from comments by a referee and the editor. Foster is grateful for support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through its network on Inequality and Poverty in Broader Perspective. Correspondence to: T. Mitra     

The effect of uncertainty on UK investment authorisation: Homogenous vs. heterogeneous estimators

This paper compares pooled and non-pooled models of UK capital investment using the Confederation of British Industrys (CBI) Industrial Trends Survey, focusing on the impact of uncertainty. The uncertainty measure is based on the cross sectional dispersion of optimism about the future business conditions in the industry in which the firm operates. The panel data estimation shows that uncertainty has quantitatively important negative effects on investment. However, if we look at the estimation results at the industry level, we find a great diversity in both estimated elasticities and t-statistics, providing valuable information not available from the pooled model. Finally, we compare the forecast performances of the above models; this analysis confirms that pooled estimators are generally better than non-pooled estimators in terms of out-of-sample forecast performance, but the difference between the two is not very large.     

Irreversible investment with regime shifts

Under the real options approach to investment under uncertainty, agents formulate optimal policies under the assumption that firms’ growth prospects do not vary over time. This paper proposes and solves a model of investment decisions in which the growth rate and volatility of the decision variable shift between different states at random times. A value-maximizing investment policy is derived such that in each regime the firm's investment policy is optimal and recognizes the possibility of a regime shift. Under this policy, investment is intermittent and increases with marginal q. Moreover, investment typically is very small but, in some states, the capital stock jumps. Implications for marginal q and the user cost of capital are also examined.     

Irreversible investment and Knightian uncertainty

When firms make a decision about irreversible investment, they may not have complete confidence about their perceived probability measure describing future uncertainty. They may think other probability measures perturbed from the original one are also possible. Such uncertainty, characterized by not a single probability measure but a set of probability measures, is called “Knightian uncertainty.” The effect of Knightian uncertainty on the value of irreversible investment opportunity is shown to be drastically different from that of traditional uncertainty in the form of risk. Specifically, an increase in Knightian uncertainty decreases the value of investment opportunity while an increase in risk increases it.     

Variability is beneficial in marked stopping problems

We consider a large class of stopping problems and show that the optimal return increases with increases in the variability of one or more of the distributions from which observations are drawn. This class of stopping problems includes many of the common variants of the standard economic search problem as well as many other stopping problems. The key assumption is that the optimal return is convex in each observation.      

Costly switching and investment volatility

Summary. This paper extends the literature on the optimal switching rule between two investments by considering the case where switching between investments is costly. The model builds on the classic framework of the multi-armed Bandit problem by explicitly incorporating two key assumptions. First, switching investments is costly. Second, only the investment operated by the investor evolves as a random walk. The objective of the investor is to maximize the discounted sum of expected net profits over the infinite horizon. The main result is that when the volatility of profits from investments increases, so does the minimum profit gain needed for an investor to switch investments.JEL Classification Numbers: C44, C61.I am indebted to Prajit K. Dutta for his guidance throughout this research. I am grateful for Presidents Summer 2000 Research Fellowship of Columbia University. I appreciate the comments from the anonymous referee. I also thank Lalith Munasinghe and Rajiv Sethi. I also thank Dr. Jong Myeon Kim for editing this version of the paper.     

Irreversible investment with uncertainty and strategic behavior

The paper provides a model of technology adoption in the case where adopting alone is more expensive than adopting when others have already done so (network effect). In addition, if each agent gains at the expense of his rivals, he may also have an incentive for ‘preemptive adoption’. We deal with these two issues in a dynamic programing framework, where adoption is seen as a strategic switching time decision problem for agents facing an ongoing stochastic operating benefit plus sunken investment costs. The model defines the option value of investing for a continuous time stochastic game. In the case of network benefits alone, agents follow a stationary bandwagon strategy, representing the effect caused by a war of attrition. Yet, as network benefits reduce adoption costs after an agent has switched, rivals may follow suit. In the opposite case, where going first gives the innovator a higher payoff the bandwagon rule is turned over and the option value of investing first may be lower than that of going second. This gives rise to sequential adoption.     

中国基础设施投资的最优规模与最优次序——基于1996-2008年各省市地区面板数据分析

本文克服各项基础设施同时回归导致的多重共线性问题,基于基础设施的边际产出与最优规模分析框架,采用中国1996-2008年各省市地区面板数据实证研究发现:中国电力、燃气和水的生产与供应业、交通运输、仓储和邮电通信业、水利、环境和公共设施管理业等各项基础设施和政府总投资的边际产出分别为5.765、2.520、1.420和1.276;最优规模分别为4.66%、3.29%、5.02%和20.95%;各项基础设施的实际投资均低于最优规模。因此,为使政府投资收益最大化可按边际产出大小顺序优先次序投资;而根据各项基础设施投资的缺口和紧迫程度,则应按实际投资与最优规模差距由大到小顺序进行投资。     

企业定期投资与分红的数学模型

在企业资金增长率不变情况下,分析了企业定期分红,企业定期分红与定期投资数学模型的性质．给出了企业只考虑分红时分红比例的取值范围,也说明了定期投资对企业稳定增长的重要性．     

Human capital investment with competitive labor search

We study human capital accumulation in the presence of labor search frictions. Given that unemployed workers can default on their education loans, skilled individuals with a larger debt burden prefer riskier but better paid careers than is socially desirable. A higher level of employment risk in turn depresses the skill premium and the incentives to invest in education. The equilibrium allocation is characterized by too low employment, underinvestment by the poor, and too little investment in skill-intensive technologies. A public education system funded by graduate taxes can restore efficiency, and it would also reduce wage inequality.     

Platform competition and seller investment incentives

Many products and services are not sold on open platforms but on competing for-profit platforms, which charge buyers and sellers for access. What is the effect of for-profit intermediation on seller investment incentives? Since for-profit intermediaries reduce the available rents in the market, one might naively suspect that sellers have weaker investment incentives with competing for-profit platforms. However, we show that for-profit intermediation may lead to overinvestment when free access would lead to underinvestment because investment decisions affect the strength of indirect network effects and, thus, access prices. We characterize the effect of for-profit intermediation on investment incentives depending on the nature of the investment and on which side of the market singlehomes.     

Uncertainty and insurance in strategic market games

Summary. For perfectly competitive economies under uncertainty, there is a well-known equivalence between a formulation with contingent goods and one with state-specific securities followed by spot markets for goods. In this paper, I examine whether this equivalence carries over to a particular form of imperfect competition. Specifically, I look at three Shapley-Shubik strategic market games: one with contingent commodities, one with Arrow securities traded under imperfect competition and one with Arrow securities traded under perfect competition. First I compare the feasibility constraints of these three games. Then I compare their equilibrium sets. As in Peck and Shell (1989), the only common equilibria between the first and the second game are those which involve no transfer of income across states. However, if the securities markets are competitive, then the set of equilibria of the contingent commodities game and the securities game coincide. Received: June 16, 1997; revised version: April 30, 1998     

我国企业对外直接投资的战略选择

市场全球化使得企业必须重视国内和国外市场上的竞争，特剐是直接投资打入发达国家技术发明中心，跟踪国际新技术发展动态，利用比较优势向发展中国家提供适用性技术，将我国的经济发展置于更广阔的空间，是我国企业在开放经济条件下和剧烈的国际竞争中经营发展的必要选择。对外直接投资、从事跨国经营活动是一个国家加入WTO后经济发展的必然趋势和选择，是适应经济全球化发展的必然要求。本文简略地分析了我国对外直接投资发展的现状，着重探讨了我国企业对外直接投资的战略选择问题。     

The impact of equity ownership groups on investment: Evidence from Ukraine

We empirically investigate the impact of different ownership groups on companies’ investment in Ukraine with a novel dynamic investment model where investment is based on present and historical levels of profitability (market-to-book value of equity) and lagged investment. Groups include state, insider, non-domestic, financial and financial and industrial group (FIG) ownership. Contrary to the literature, we find that the past level of profitability significantly affects investment; the majority presence of and increases in state ownership have a negative impact on firms’ investment, as is the case for non-domestic and financial companies’ ownership. Insider and FIG ownership have no impact on investment. We explain the results by the extent of liquidity concerns (hard and soft budget constraints), measured by cash flow interacted with a dummy variable of majority ownership of the respective group, and the extent of asset stripping for the corresponding ownership group and relate them to over- and under-investment, and to the free cash flow or cash constraint hypothesis.     

Regional Insurance and Migration

A dynamic model of migration is developed to study whether labor mobility can hedge people against region-specific shocks, making private or public insurance redundant. The model adopts a novel timing for migration, which is argued to be the time frame suitable for analyzing risk-sharing issues. It also innovates on the existing literature by solving individual migration through convexification of the set of actions. The results show that the role of migration as an insurance mechanism is small: labor mobility cannot fully remove income differentials between regions. It is also shown that a fiscal stabilization scheme is, in general, optimal; moreover, any pure risk-sharing mechanism has no influence on migration flows.     

Evaluation of Laboratory Directed Research and Development investment areas at Sandia

Sandia National Laboratories conducts a variety of research projects each year under its Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. Recently, information visualization techniques have been used with corporate data to map several LDRD investment areas for the purpose of understanding strategic overlaps and identifying potential opportunities for future development outside of our current technologies. Tools, techniques, and specific analyses are presented here. We find that these tools and techniques hold great promise for aiding the future direction of the science and technology enterprise.     

Behind the black box: a survey of real-world investment appraisal approaches

This paper assesses business investment appraisal techniques and expectations formation. The paper begins with a comparative analysis of the links between fixed asset investment theories and real world investment appraisal techniques, focusing on the underlying assumptions about rationality and expectations. In the empirical sections, these ideas are tested via an analysis of business behaviour based upon survey evidence from a sample of Cambridgeshire manufacturing firms. The statistical analysis focuses on hypothesis testing, ordered probit estimations and simulations. The evidence presented reveals that whilst conventional production function analysis does provide some explanatory power in describing the objective determinants of firm investment activity, subjective and behavioural factors are also important.The author is grateful to Geoff Harcourt, Philip Arestis and an anonymous referee for their encouraging advice and suggestions.     

Should merchant transmission investment be subject to a must-offer provision?

Merchant electricity transmission investment is a practically relevant example of an unregulated investment with monopoly properties. However, while leaving the investment decision to the market, the regulator may decide to prohibit capacity withholding with a must-offer provision. This paper examines the welfare effects of a must-offer provision prior to the capacity choice, given three reasons for capacity withholding: uncertainty, demand growth and pre-emptive investment. A must-offer provision will decrease welfare in the first two cases, and can enhance welfare only in the last case. In the presence of importer market power, a regulatory test might be needed.      

Determinants of innovation behaviour and investment estimates for west-german manufacturing firms

In this paper, the determinants of innovation behaviour and investment are explored with a large micro-data panel from West-German manufacturing firms. The estimates are discussed within a microeconomic model with monopolistic competition, demand uncertainty and a delayed adjustment of capacities and the production technology. The estimates reveal positive firm-size effects which hint towards scale economies associated with innovations. Market power promotes innovations but not investment, and exporters innovate more but exhibit less investment expenditures. Finally, excess demand promotes innovations. This indicates a complementarity of innovations and investment and hints towards permanent productivity effects of temporary demand shocks.