The introduction of uncertainty can make a significant difference in the valuation of a project. This manifests itself, inter alia, in the regulatory constraints that can affect the valuations of the firm’s investment which, in turn has an adverse impact on consumers’ welfare. In particular, the inability to exercise any or all of the delay, abandon, start/stop, and time-to-build options has an...

Mitigation and adaptation represent two solutions to the issue of global warming. While mitigation aims at reducing CO2 emissions and preventing climate change, adaptation encompasses a broad scope of techniques used to reduce the impacts of climate change once they have occurred. Both have direct costs on a country’s Gross Domestic Product, but costs also arise from temperature increases due t...

In aggregate, options on real and financial assets can have very different properties. Typically, the good or service produced by a real asset has a finite elasticity of demand and developers have finite capacities. Also, the supply of options can be limited, and developers can be less than perfectly competitive. In a subgame, perfect Nash equilibrium with these properties, the optimal exercise...

This note presents a non-comprehensive summary of the contributions made in the real options literature.

The operation of a complex system in a high stakes environment can lead to unacceptable levels of risk. The unintended consequences of system failure or under-performance make it imperative to understand and manage operational uncertainty during the design phase. In order to manage operational uncertainty, this paper presents the application of real options analysis in design. Our approach firs...

In this paper we present a preliminary approach to the evaluation of policies and projects based on current thinking on cost benefit analysis and real option methodology and the authors’ recent work on the same subject. We start from the assumption that economic agents undertake investment projects in order to create and exploit opportunities for increasing profits, growth, wealth and, ultimate...

The equilibrium is derived in a real options game on the basis of a multidimensional state variable. In the game, firms optimize both investment time and project choice in projects that have not been chosen by the leading competitors. We demonstrate how the equilibrium changes with the number of firms, the number of projects, and the correlation between project values. Consistent with previous ...

Real options valuation (ROV) considers the managerial flexibility to make ongoing decisions regarding implementation of investment projects and deployment of real assets. This paper introduces a simulation-optimization approach to valuing real investment options based on a model containing several decision variables and realistic stochastic inputs. Using this approach, the value of a portfolio ...

We thank the editor and an anonymous referee. Any errors are our own. Abstract Using the WACC to Value Real Options We present a real option valuation using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC). This is an alternative to risk-neutral real option valuation. Using the WACC involves a marginal increase in mathematical complexity, but it is easy to implement in a spreadsheet, and it is easy ...