During the last decade, a series of valuation studies have made attempts at estimating the external environmental costs of various power generation sources. The purposes of this paper are: (a) to explore some of the ethical limits of the economic valuation of environmental impacts; and (b) to analyze what the implications are of these limits for the social choice between different electric powe...

The present paper reviews activity in environmental valuation by examining trends in publication rates over the past three decades. It also provides an overview of the demand for environmental valuation by academic markets and by policy markets. The results of this historical analysis suggest that there is not as much use of environmental valuation in policy analysis as could be expected given ...

Purpose New product development (NPD) generally requires substantial company investment. The financial cost to a company can be high if a new product subsequently fails to sell adequately. Managers therefore need robust decision-making tools for valuing potential new product investments in order to justify their development strategy and to allow them to screen out new devices that stand little ...

This thesis aims to elucidate real option thinking and real option valuation techniques for innovative technology investment. Treating the fuel cell R&D investment as a real option for General Motor's light passenger vehicle fleet, the thesis presents a 3-step approach to value the R&D and its influence on the fleet value, in which the uncertainties and managerial flexibility are proactively ac...

This paper presents an extension of the Fisher Separation Theorem applicable in multiperiod, "partially complete" markets where some, but not all, risks may be hedged by trading securities. Given necessary and sufficient conditions on preferences, an investor contemplating investments in productive opportunities (or projects) and financial securities can decompose this problem into production a...

Embedding is the widely-observed phenomenon that a good is assigned a higher value if evaluated on its own rather than as part of a more inclusive set. Embedding is considered a serious problem affecting the quality of many environmental management and health risk policy judgments. This paper presents the results of an experiment involving of a structured, small-group approach for conducting en...

Intangible benefits have been a thorn in the side of information technology project valuation efforts. These benefits are often comparable to tangible benefits in magnitude, and so should not be ignored. Yet, unless we can attach numbers to them, it is difficult to combine them in a consistent way with tangible benefits to reduce the chances of underestimating the true value of a project. The l...