A review of: “REAL OPTIONS: MANAGERIAL FLEXIBILITY AND STRATEGY IN RESOURCE ALLOCATION ” BY LENOS TRIGEORGIS The MIT Press,ISBN: 0-262-20102-X., xiii + 427 pp. List: $52.95.

One of the more controversial aspects of a public utility rate case is the determination of the cost of equity component of the allowed return. In practice, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, CAPM, and the Discounted Cash Flow Model, DCF, are used for this purpose. The difficulties in using the CAPM have been documented elsewhere. This note examines the DCF model.

The DCF implicitly assumes that earnings and dividends are growing at a constant rate. When dividend changes are in discrete jumps, the underlying assumptions of the DCF model have been violated. This note derives a DCF model for dividend changes that occur in discrete jumps.