IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/annfin/v9y2013i3p383-420.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technological advances and the decision to invest

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Flor
  • Simon Hansen

Abstract

Technological advances impact a firm’s investment decision, as they affect the investment cost. They can also affect the profitability due to demand shocks. We study a firm’s optimal investment decision when technological advances occur as surprises and induce uncertain reductions in the investment cost and in earnings. Despite this complex setting we derive closed-form solutions for the investment option value and the investment threshold. When technological advances only impact the investment cost, we demonstrate significant contributions compared to existing research, which restricts the analysis by keeping the expected investment cost path constant. For example, we show that, albeit the investment threshold is constant, the option value is very sensitive in the expected impact of technological advances. Leaving the restrictive setting, we obtain more intuitive results, e.g. that more frequent technological advances increase the option value. When technological advances impact future earnings we find important long-term effects: the investment threshold increases, whereas the option value decreases. Finally, earnings volatility postpones investment, while uncertainty due to technological advances expedites investment. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Flor & Simon Hansen, 2013. "Technological advances and the decision to invest," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 383-420, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:annfin:v:9:y:2013:i:3:p:383-420
    DOI: 10.1007/s10436-012-0191-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10436-012-0191-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10436-012-0191-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oscar Gutiérrez & Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda, 2011. "Real options with unknown-date events," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 171-198, May.
    2. Svetlana Boyarchenko & Sergei Levendorskii, 2005. "American options: the EPV pricing model," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 267-292, August.
    3. Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter, 1992. "A Model of Growth through Creative Destruction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(2), pages 323-351, March.
    4. Tor Jakob Klette & Samuel Kortum, 2004. "Innovating Firms and Aggregate Innovation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 986-1018, October.
    5. S. G. Kou & Hui Wang, 2004. "Option Pricing Under a Double Exponential Jump Diffusion Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1178-1192, September.
    6. Glenn C. Loury, 1979. "Market Structure and Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(3), pages 395-410.
    7. Ernesto Mordecki, 1999. "Optimal stopping for a diffusion with jumps," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 227-236.
    8. Jacco Thijssen, 2010. "Irreversible investment and discounting: an arbitrage pricing approach," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 295-315, July.
    9. Wong, Kit Pong, 2007. "The effect of uncertainty on investment timing in a real options model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 2152-2167, July.
    10. Robert McDonald & Daniel Siegel, 1986. "The Value of Waiting to Invest," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 707-727.
    11. Sarkar, Sudipto, 2000. "On the investment-uncertainty relationship in a real options model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 219-225, February.
    12. Murto, Pauli, 2007. "Timing of investment under technological and revenue-related uncertainties," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1473-1497, May.
    13. Ernesto Mordecki, 2002. "Optimal stopping and perpetual options for Lévy processes," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 473-493.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Armerin, Fredrik, 2023. "Investments with declining cost following a Lévy process," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1052-1062.
    2. Shahbaz Sheikh, 2017. "Threat of termination and firm innovation," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 75-95, February.
    3. Nunes, Cláudia & Oliveira, Carlos & Pimentel, Rita, 2021. "Quasi-analytical solution of an investment problem with decreasing investment cost due to technological innovations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    4. Laura Delaney & Polina Kovaleva, 2017. "The dampening effect of iceberg orders on small traders’ welfare," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 453-484, November.
    5. Hwa-Sung Kim, 2023. "Effects of ambiguity on innovation strategies," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 1-27, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barrieu, Pauline & Bellamy, N., 2007. "Optimal hitting time and perpetual option in a non-Lévy model: application to real options," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 5099, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Kit Wong, 2010. "On the neutrality of debt in investment intensity," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 335-356, July.
    3. Davis, Graham A. & Cairns, Robert D., 2012. "Good timing: The economics of optimal stopping," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 255-265.
    4. Oscar Gutiérrez & Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda, 2011. "Real options with unknown-date events," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 171-198, May.
    5. Wong, Kit Pong, 2011. "Progressive taxation and the intensity and timing of investment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1-2), pages 100-108, January.
    6. Gutiérrez, Óscar, 2020. "On the definition of the investment-uncertainty relationship," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    7. Gapeev Pavel V. & Kühn Christoph, 2005. "Perpetual convertible bonds in jump-diffusion models," Statistics & Risk Modeling, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1/2005), pages 15-31, January.
    8. Xianlei Ma & Justus Wesseler & Nico Heerink & Futian Qu, 2013. "Land Tenure Reforms and Land Conservation Investments in China ¨C What Does Real Option Value Theory Tell Us?," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 3, pages 19-33, August.
    9. Bernard Njindan Iyke & Sin-Yu Ho, 2020. "The effects of transitory and permanent inflation uncertainty on investment in Ghana," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 195-217, February.
    10. Christopher A. Laincz & Ana Rodrigues, 2006. "The Impact of Cost Reducing R\&D Spillovers on the Ergodic Distribution of Market Structures," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 307, Society for Computational Economics.
    11. Armerin, Fredrik, 2023. "Investments with declining cost following a Lévy process," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1052-1062.
    12. Christos Koulovatianos & Leonard J. Mirman, 2003. "R&D Investment, Market Structure, and Industry Growth," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 8-2003, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    13. Sarkar, Sudipto, 2021. "The uncertainty-investment relationship with endogenous capacity," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    14. S. G. Kou & Hui Wang, 2004. "Option Pricing Under a Double Exponential Jump Diffusion Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(9), pages 1178-1192, September.
    15. Óscar Gutiérrez, 2021. "Real options and the perverse effect of interest rates on investment timing," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 3984-3996, July.
    16. Gapeev, Pavel V., 2008. "The integral option in a model with jumps," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(16), pages 2623-2631, November.
    17. Wong, Kit Pong, 2011. "Progressive taxation and the intensity and timing of investment," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 100-108.
    18. Gryglewicz, Sebastian & Huisman, Kuno J.M. & Kort, Peter M., 2008. "Finite project life and uncertainty effects on investment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2191-2213, July.
    19. Redha Fares, 2022. "Bankruptcy, Performance and Market Selection: Evidence from Firms in France," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph22-01 edited by Claude Mathieu, February.
    20. Lukas, Elmar & Thiergart, Sascha, 2019. "The interaction of debt financing, cash grants and the optimal investment policy under uncertainty," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 284-299.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal investment; Price uncertainty; Cost uncertainty; Real options; Shocks; G31; D81;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:annfin:v:9:y:2013:i:3:p:383-420. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.