Financing constrains on investment are mainly important for small privately owned firms. Yet most of the investment literature focuses on the financing constraints of large publicly owned firms. This paper develops a financing constraints test based on a variable capital investment equation. Because it does not require the information about marginal q, the test can be easily applied to small fi...

We investigate the implications of technological innovation and non-diversifiable risk on entrepreneurial entry and optimal portfolio choice. In a real options model where two risk-averse individuals strategically decide on technology adoption, we show that the impact of non-diversifiable risk on the option timing decision is ambiguous and depends on the frequency of technological change. Compa...

We analyze the optimal contract to finance the series of investments of a growing firm. The analysis is based on the need to repeatedly raise funds when informed insiders can expropriate outside investors. The optimal contract can be implemented by a sequence of one-period debt contracts and equity ownership by outsiders. Debt is optimal, as it reduces the expected cost of auditing, while parti...

In this paper we develop a valuation model when there exist two competitive firms that face irreversible investment decisions under the demand uncertainty. We propose a numerical procedure to derive both project values and equilibrium strategies in the duopolistic environment. In numerical examples we consider two different economic conditions, which are labelled first mover advantage and secon...

This paper analyzes the investment timing for team projects. Under demand uncertainty, it is valuable to maintain flexibility in future investment alternatives. However, one party’s flexibility creates strategic uncertainty for another party, which causes the other party to choose a higher level of flexibility. This strategic complementarity leads to delays in investments in contrast to the cas...

This paper presents a model tha t measures the impact of political risk on portfolio investment when the political risks are multivariate and correlated across countries. The multivariate approach generalizes the single country model but retains most of its characteristics in terms of its ability to price political risk based on the stochastic process of exposure to loss and the expected freque...

We develop a dynamic incomplete-markets model of entrepreneurial firms, and demonstrate the implications of nondiversifiable risks for entrepreneurs’ interdependent consumption, portfolio allocation, financing, investment, and business exit decisions. We characterize the optimal capital structure via a generalized tradeoff model where risky debt provides significant diversification benefits. No...

Many economic decisions can be described as an option exercise or optimal stopping problem under uncertainty. Motivated by experimental evidence such as the Ellsberg Paradox, we follow Knight (1921) and distinguish risk from uncertainty. To afford this distinction, we adopt the multiple-priors utility model. We show that the impact of ambiguity on the option exercise decision depends on the rel...

We explain how to optimize portfolios with respect to RORAC and RORC based on Expected Shortfall. Recent results from the theories of performance measurement and Swarm Intelligence are used for numeric optimization. We combine and correlate geometric Brownian motions for stocks with a two-factor Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (CIR-2) model for interest rates such that portfolios of bonds and stocks can be ...

We study a novel aspect of a firm’s capital structure, namely the profile of its debt maturity dates. In a simple theoretical framework we show that the dispersion of debt maturities constitutes an important dimension of capital structure choice, driven by firm characteristics and debt rollover risk. Guided by these results we establish two main empirical results. First, using an exogenous shoc...