We discuss the characteristics of investment decisions and identify the factors that affect consumers’ information search behavior when they make investment decisions. Using the 2000 to 2001 MacroMonitor data set, we find that subjective knowledge, amount of investment, risk tolerance, age, education, and income influence both the extent of information search and the use of specific information...

This paper constructs a model of corporate investment decisions under hyperbolic discounting of present values. The hyperbolic discounted present value can be interpreted as reáecting irrational myopic preferences or, as this paper demonstrates, reduced-form implications of corporate agency issues. Both cases result in an underinvestment problem for the Örm, but the Örm valuation criteria di§er...

In this article the growth models of Feldman (1928) and Mahalanobis (1953) are extended to analyse the implications of the process of structural change on the decisions of investment allocation. By using the device of vertical integration, their constructions are shown to be a particular case of the Pasinetti’s (1981) model of structural change. Their analysis is then carried out in a multi-sec...

The paper studies the interaction between cyclical uncertainty and investment in a stochastic real option framework where demand shifts stochastically between two different states, each with different rates of drift and volatility. In our setting the shifts are governed by a two-state Markov switching model with constant transition probabilities. The magnitude of the link between cyclical uncer...

This paper studies the value and optimal timing for investment in finite-lived monopolies, extending the literature on real option games by considering the cases of random and certain-lived monopolies. Under these settings, firms face the risk of demonopolization, that can occur as a random or a certain event. We show that these new settings produce significantly different results when compared...

The optimal proportion of financial wealth placed in stocks versus risk-free bonds changes over an investor’s life and is very sensitive to the long-run correlation between stock returns and labor income. If this correlation is assumed to be high, then the optimal proportion of stock is humpshaped and approximately zero for young agents, in contrast to the claims of financial advisers and most ...

Most Real Options authors have been assuming that the only critical variable in the investment decision analysis is price. The success of an investment depends not only on the price of a product but also on other variables like the quantity of production. The number of units sold is a variable with different characteristics than price. It can be in some applications a discrete variable, and its...

We apply a new and innovative approach to communicating risks associated with financial products that should support investors in making better investment decisions. In our experiments, participants are able to gain ”simulated experience” by random sampling of a previously described return distribution. We find that simulated experience considerably improves participants’ understanding of the u...

UNLABELLED A recent trial in rheumatoid arthritis found an inexpensive, but infrequently used, combination of therapies is neither inferior nor less safe than an expensive biologic drug. If the trial had been conducted over 10 years ago, arguably 100's of millions of dollars since spent on biologics could have been released to other, more effective treatments. Given the ever increasing number o...