Real Options: Experimental Evidence

Empirical testing of the real options theory has been very limited. This is primarily due to various inherent problems with obtaining field data for many components of real options theory. This paper utilizes experimental methodology to generate the data. The advantage of the experimental approach is that it enables the investigator to generate reliable and replicable data in a controlled environment. The results of the experiment indicate that fundamental insights of real options theory are not evident to individual investors. The majority invested too early and thus failed to recognize the benefit of the option to wait. However, when the investors had to compete with others for the right to invest, their bids generally reflected the value of the embedded option. Furthermore, as predicted by the theory, their bids increased with greater uncertainty about future cash flows from the investment.     

实物期权研究述评

实物期权思想是Wcisbrod（1974）和Arrow（1974）等人研究在给定不可逆条件下政府投资决策时首先提出的。随后,实物期权被广泛运用于资本预算和价值评估领域,相比传统的资本预算模型（DCF）具有无比优越性。而将实物期权理论用于解释企业存在与效率边际则为企业理论提供了一个动态的观察角度,必将对企业理论的发展产生深远影响。     

Real Options Premia Implied from Recent Transactions in the Greek Real Estate Market

This research is the first to examine the empirical predictions of a real option-pricing model on market values from the realty market of a Euro area country, namely Greece. Using a manually collected sample of land and property transaction prices, we demonstrate that, a model which incorporates the option to wait to develop land has explanatory power on observed prices over and above the intrinsic value from a simple discounted cash flow (DCF) approach. Recent land transactions in our sample seem to reflect a premium for the option to wait (‘real option premium’) that can be as high as 26.66%–52.38%, especially in the west and north suburbs of Athens. Estimates of annual volatility for specific properties, as implied by transaction prices, are found to range from 15% to 21%.     

基于实物期权理论的高新技术价值评估研究

本文应用期权定价模型来评估高新技术企业价值中的无形资产或者说潜在的机会价值.根据原有的经典模型,针对高新技术企业的特点引入了延迟成本的概念,对无形资产的实物期权定价模型进行改进,并通过案例阐述了具体的评估过程.     

Mortgage Put Options and Real Estate Markets

In this paper we offer direct evidence that financial intermediation does impact underlying asset markets. We develop a specific observable symptom of a banking system that underprices the put option imbedded in non-recourse asset-backed lending. Using a dataset for 19 countries and over 500 real estate investment trusts, we find that, following a negative demand shock, the “underpricing” economies experience far deeper asset market crashes than economies in which the put option is correctly priced.

Real Options Analysis: Where Are the Emperor's Clothes?

Once a topic of interest only to finance specialists, real options analysis now receives active, mainstream attention in business schools and industry. This article provides practitioners with a critical review of five well-established real options approaches that are extensively documented in the academic and professional literature. These approaches include the "classic approach" and "revised classic approach" (as proposed by Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka), the "subjective approach" (as proposed by Tim Luehrman), the "MAD Approach" (as proposed by Tom Copeland and Vladimir Antikarov), and the "integrated approach" (as proposed by James Smith and Robert Nau). The article discusses the assumptions, mechanics, and potential range of applications of each approach, along with the results when applied to a simple case involving development of a natural gas field.
While the approaches share a focus on investment flexibility and shareholder value, they rely on fundamentally different assumptions, use significantly different techniques, and can produce dramatically different results. Consequently, a great deal of thought must go into selecting and applying them in practice. The revised classic approach appears to be best suited to cases dominated either by "market" risk or "private" risk alone, and where approximate results are acceptable and resources are limited. The integrated approach is best suited to cases with a mix of market and technological risks, and where accuracy and a management roadmap are critical.     

论物业税税基评估主体的选择

在物业税开征之前,确立物业税税基评估主体并对其性质予以确认是一个亟待解决的问题。本文借鉴国际经验,通过比较分析,认为我国应该选择准政府性质的专属评估机构来负责税基评估工作。同时,应由物业税税基评估师对物业税税基进行准确评估。     

实物期权理论在企业并购定价中的应用

本文认为,企业价值可以划分为现实资产价值和期权价值两部分。前者可以运用传统的企业价值评估方法进行评估,后者则对企业拥有的期权进行识别和评估,两者之和即为企业价值。通过引进期权理论对传统方法进行改进,本文导出了基于并购特征和企业经营灵活性的并购企业的出价范围,为并购中对目标企业定价提供了一种思路和方法。     

实物期权理论及其在资产评估中的应用

本文认为现金流折现法是一种相对静态的价值评估方法,只有同时考虑资产的收益现值及其内嵌的实物期权价值才能比较准确评估未来不确定性特征比较明显的资产价值本文探讨了实物期权方法在自然资源、房地产、研发项目及无形资产、柔性制造设备等资产的价值评估中的运用,最后应用二叉树模型对矿山开采权的评估案例进行了分析:现金流折现法(以下简称DCF法)是一种传统的价值评估方法,该方法认为资产或公司的价值等于其预期现金流按照一定折现率贴现后的现值从理论上讲,如果能准确预测资产或公司未来现金流,并对其相应的风险有个合理评估,那么采用该方法就能较准确评估资产或公司的内在价值.从20世纪60年代开始,DCF法在欧美国家逐渐得到认同并被广泛使用.     

Urban Spatial Development: a Real Options Approach

We investigate urban spatial development assuming that landowners irreversibly develop property in an uncertain environment. Unlike the standard monocentric city model, we assume that bid rents for houses are not monotonically decreasing with the distance from the central business district (CBD) because there exist subcenters that are subsidiary to the CBD. As a result, land is initially developed outward from the CBD. Leapfrog development may happen, i.e., distant land from the CBD may be developed prior to nearby land; however, land that is developed later will be more densely developed because it is developed at a better state of nature. We further find that the development patterns of at least four large cities are consistent with that predicted by our model.     

How Kimberly‐Clark Uses Real Options

During the past five years, Kimberly‐Clark (K‐C) has faced a familiar management challenge: How can senior managers bring the rigor and discipline used to make daily operating decisions to the uncertain and risky world of innovation? The challenge was particularly acute at K‐C because the company is well known for its reliance on Return On Invested Capital (ROIC) and Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), both measures that are widely believed to lead to undervaluation of projects with risky upside potential. This article discusses how and why K‐C adopted and now uses the real options approach to project evaluation and management. The authors also share some lessons learned during the adoption process, including how the company adapted the real options framework to its own circumstances and requirements. The K‐C experience shows that successful adoption rests on a number of factors that have less to do with the rigor or precision of quantitative models than with matters of corporate process and organizational design.     

完善监管防“暗箱”

做市业务的上线,使新三板瞬间找到了匍渔翻身”的感觉,新制度出台第一周,交易量就超过了今年前7个月总成交量的一半。与此同时,新三板对中小企业的吸引力也明显提升。不过,做市商制度任助推新三板市场实现由“挂牌市”向“融资市”转变的同时,其对于活跃市场的后劲以及对券商的监督作用究竟如何,也引起了业内的热议。     

Realizing the Potential of Real Options: Does Theory Meet Practice?

The idea of viewing corporate investment opportunities as “real options” has been around for over 25 years. Real options concepts and techniques now routinely appear in academic research in finance and economics, and have begun to influence scholarly work in virtually every business discipline, including strategy, organizations, management science, operations management, information systems, accounting, and marketing. Real options concepts have also made considerable headway in practice. Corporate managers are more likely to recognize options in their strategic planning process, and have become more proactive in designing flexibility into projects and contracts, frequently using real options vocabulary in their discussions. Thanks in part to the spread of real options thinking, today's strategic planners are more likely than their predecessors to recognize the “option” value of actions like the following: ? dividing up large projects into a number of stages; ? investing in the acquisition or production of information; ? introducing “modularity” in manufacturing and design; ? developing competing prototypes for new products; and ? investing in overseas markets. But if real options has clearly succeeded as a way of thinking, the application of real options valuation methods has been limited to companies in relatively few industries and has thus failed to live up to expectations created in the mid‐ to late‐1990s. Increased corporate acceptance and implementations of real options valuation techniques will require several changes coming together. On the theory side, we need more realistic models that better reflect differences between financial and real options, simple heuristic methods that can be more easily implemented (but that have been carefully benchmarked against more precise models), and better guidance on implementation issues such as the estimation of discount rates for the “optionless” underlying projects. On the practitioner side, we need user‐friendly real options software, more senior‐level buy‐in, more deliberate diffusion of real options knowledge throughout organizations, better alignment of managerial incentives with long‐term shareholder value, and better‐designed contracts to correct the misalignment of incentives across the value chain. If these challenges can be met, there will continue to be a steady if gradual diffusion of real options analysis throughout organizations over the next few decades, with real options eventually becoming not only a standard part of corporate strategic planning, but also the primary valuation tool for assessing the expected shareholder effect of large capital investment projects.     

Opening the Black Box: Internal Capital Markets and Managerial Power

We analyze the internal capital markets of a multinational conglomerate, using a unique panel data set of planned and actual allocations to business units and a survey of unit CEOs. Following cash windfalls, more powerful managers obtain larger allocations and increase investment substantially more than their less connected peers. We identify cash windfalls as a source of misallocation of capital, as more powerful managers overinvest and their units exhibit lower ex post performance and productivity. These findings contribute to our understanding of frictions in resource allocation within firms and point to an important channel through which power may lead to inefficiencies.     

Penetrating the Book-to-Market Black Box: The R&D Effect

The book-to-market (BM) phenomenon – the positive association between BM and subsequent returns – looms large among capital market enigmas. Economic theory postulates that the difference between market and book values of companies reflects their future abnormal profits. We capture these abnormal profits for a large sample of science-based companies by estimating the value of the off-balance sheet investment generating those profits – the value of R&D capital – and show empirically: (i) Firms' R&D capital is associated with their subsequent stock returns. (ii) For R&D intensive firms, this 'R&D effect' subsumes the 'book-to-market effect.' (iii) The association between R&D and subsequent returns appears to result from an extra-market risk factor inherent in R&D, rather than from stock mispricing. We thus provide an explanation for the book-to-market phenomenon of R&D companies.     

Laboratory Evidence on How Managers Intuitively Value Real Growth Options

We asked 82 experienced managers to value, in effect, a set of real options, by taking decisions on invented case studies. The classic Black Scholes model should set an upper bound for rational valuations of these options (since it assumes a risk neutral discount rate, which may be optimistic). The managers valued their options erratically, and generally optimistically, though their responses to changes in moneyness, volatility and maturity tended to be in the 'correct' directions. Oil industry managers over-valued least, relative to Black-Scholes, and Brewery managers most. Questionnaires explored managers' perceptions of the real option parameters encountered in their workplaces.     

Product Development and Market Expansion: A Real Options Model

We create a model that values complementary and substitute products with potentially correlated revenues, which must be developed sequentially. The model also incorporates the effects of changing market conditions. We find that the value of a combined project increases in correlation, but the probability of investing in the initial product is a decreasing function of correlation. These results are reversed if the products are substitutes. Regardless of the correlation level, higher levels of substitutability reduce the value of the combined projects and increase the probability of investing. Despite greater uncertainty during the phase of limited competition, the firm is more likely to invest early than to postpone investment.     

Real Options, Product Market Competition, and Asset Returns

We study how competition in the product market affects the link between firms' real investment decisions and their asset return dynamics. In our model, assets in place and growth options have different sensitivities to market wide uncertainty. The strategic behavior of market participants influences the relative importance of these components of firm value. We show that the relationship between the degree of competition and assets' expected rates of return varies with product market demand. When demand is low, firms in more competitive industries earn higher returns, whereas when demand is high firms in more concentrated industries earn higher returns.     

Computing a Multivariate Normal Integral for Valuing Compound Real Options

We extend the Geske (1979) model to a multivariate normal integral for the valuation of a compound real option. We compared the computing speeds and errors of three numerical integration methods, namely, Drezner's improved Gauss quadrature method, Monte Carlo method and Lattice method, together with appropriate critical value finding methods. It is found that secant method for finding critical values combined with Lattice method and run by Fortran took merely one second, Monte Carlo method 120 seconds. It is also found that the real option decreases with interest rate, not necessarily positively correlated with volatility , a result different from that anticipated under financial option theory. This is mainly because the underlying of real option is a non-traded asset, which brings dividend-like yield into the formula of compound real options. Dividend-like yield rises with the multiplication of correlation coefficient and . High indicates the poor diversification advantage of the new investment project in relation to the existing market portfolio, and the value of real call option decreases with . Conversely, when is low, the proposed project provides better diversification advantage and the real call option rises with . Irrespective of the value of , when interest rate increases, the value of real call option drops, especially when is high, the value of the project is dominated by interest rate.