When assigning a concession contract, the regulator faces the issue of setting the concession length. Another key issue is whether or not the concessionare should be allowed to set the timing of new invest- ments. In this paper we investigate the impact of concession length and investment timing ?exibility on the ?concession value?. It is generally argued that long-term contracts are privately valuable as they enable a concessionaire to increase her overall discounted returns. Moreover, the real option theory suggests that investment ?exibility has an in- trinsic value, as it allows concessionaires to avoid costly errors. By combining these two conventional wisdoms, one may argue that long- term contracts, which allow for investment timing ?exibility, should always result in higher concession values. Our result suggests that this is not always the case. Firstly, investment ?exibility does not always increase the concession value. Secondly, long-term contracts do not necessarily increase the concession value.
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Paper provided by University of Brescia, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
ubs0502.
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