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Irreversible Investments And Ambiguity Aversion

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  • ÁLVARO CARTEA

    (Department of Mathematics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK*Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, Oxford, UK)

  • SEBASTIAN JAIMUNGAL

    (#x2020;Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)

Abstract

Real option valuation has traditionally been concerned with investment under project value uncertainty while assuming that the agent has perfect confidence in a specific model. However, agents do not generally have perfect confidence in their model and this ambiguity may affect their decisions. In addition, the value of real investments is not typically fully spanned by tradable assets because markets are incomplete as is typically the case in energy and commodities. In this paper, we account for the agent’s aversion to model ambiguity and address market incompleteness through the notion of robust indifference prices. We derive analytical results for the perpetual option to invest and the linear complementarity problem that the finite-time version of this problem satisfies. Ambiguity aversion has a number of effects on decision making some of which cannot be explained by altering the agent’s risk aversion. For example, ambiguity averse agents are found to exercise real options both earlier and later than their ambiguity neutral counterparts, depending on whether ambiguity stems from uncertainty in the dynamics of the project value or the dynamics of a hedging asset.

Suggested Citation

  • Álvaro Cartea & Sebastian Jaimungal, 2017. "Irreversible Investments And Ambiguity Aversion," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(07), pages 1-26, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijtafx:v:20:y:2017:i:07:n:s0219024917500443
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219024917500443
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ali Al-Aradi & Alvaro Cartea & Sebastian Jaimungal, 2018. "Technical Uncertainty in Real Options with Learning," Papers 1803.05831, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2018.
    2. Alvaro Cartea & Ryan Donnelly & Sebastian Jaimungal, 2019. "Hedging Non-Tradable Risks with Transaction Costs and Price Impact," Papers 1908.00054, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2020.
    3. Cartea, Álvaro & Jaimungal, Sebastian & Qin, Zhen, 2019. "Speculative trading of electricity contracts in interconnected locations," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 3-20.
    4. Sarkar, Sudipto, 2021. "The uncertainty-investment relationship with endogenous capacity," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    5. Álvaro Cartea & Ryan Donnelly & Sebastian Jaimungal, 2020. "Hedging nontradable risks with transaction costs and price impact," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 833-868, July.

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