IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2412.20285.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Option Value of Contract Duration: Evidence from the U.S. Timber Market

Author

Listed:
  • Shosuke Noguchi
  • Suguru Otani

Abstract

This study quantifies how contract duration influences buyers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) when they hold real options that allow them to flexibly time consumption in response to changing market conditions. Using contract data from the US timber industry, we show that buyers delay consumption to manage payoff risk. This behavior generates heterogeneous WTP across buyers. We use structural estimation to uncover the key parameters underlying the incentive to delay consumption. Using these estimates, we conduct counterfactual simulations to measure how longer contract durations shift WTP and to clarify the boundary conditions linked to project size, buyer composition, and market trends. The counterfactual simulations reveal that extending contract duration from 3 to 4 years raises seller revenue by 9-13%, with effects amplified for larger projects and high-type buyers during the upward market trend.

Suggested Citation

  • Shosuke Noguchi & Suguru Otani, 2024. "The Option Value of Contract Duration: Evidence from the U.S. Timber Market," Papers 2412.20285, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2412.20285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.20285
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rust, John, 1987. "Optimal Replacement of GMC Bus Engines: An Empirical Model of Harold Zurcher," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 999-1033, September.
    2. Timothy Hubbard & René Kirkegaard & Harry Paarsch, 2013. "Using Economic Theory to Guide Numerical Analysis: Solving for Equilibria in Models of Asymmetric First-Price Auctions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 241-266, August.
    3. Margaret Insley & Kimberly Rollins, 2005. "On Solving the Multirotational Timber Harvesting Problem with Stochastic Prices: A Linear Complementarity Formulation," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(3), pages 735-755.
    4. Gérard P. P. Cachon & Pnina Feldman, 2017. "Is Advance Selling Desirable with Competition?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 214-231, March.
    5. Jinhong Xie & Steven M. Shugan, 2001. "Electronic Tickets, Smart Cards, and Online Prepayments: When and How to Advance Sell," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 219-243, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Oksana Loginova, 2021. "Advance selling, competition, and brand substitutability," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(7), pages 1765-1781, October.
    2. Jue Wang & Yuri Levin & Mikhail Nediak, 2019. "Selling Passes to Strategic Customers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 1095-1115, July.
    3. Seo, Kyowon & Go, Sarang & Kim, Byungdo, 2020. "Pricing strategies under markets with time gap between purchase and consumption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 312-320.
    4. Du, Shaofu & Chen, Yuan & Peng, Jing & Nie, Tengfei, 2022. "Incorporating risk fairness concerns into wine futures under quality uncertainty," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    5. Peng, Weicai & Tian, Zhongjun, 2022. "Information acquisition, selling effort and pre-order strategy," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    6. Wen Zhang & Weizhe Yang, 2021. "Optimal pre-order strategy with delay in payments," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 305(1), pages 347-374, October.
    7. Baoli Shi & Qi Xu & Renbang Shan, 2024. "Pricing and outsourcing strategies in different online sales models within a co‐opetitive supply chain," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(2), pages 828-842, March.
    8. Bai, Yuge & Li, Hongyan & Gu, Mengdi, 2024. "Advance selling policies with stochastic consumer valuations and advertising effects: dynamic pricing and inventory decisions," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    9. Cirillo, Cinzia & Bastin, Fabian & Hetrakul, Pratt, 2018. "Dynamic discrete choice model for railway ticket cancellation and exchange decisions," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 137-146.
    10. Wu, Meng & Teunter, Ruud H. & Zhu, Stuart X., 2019. "Online marketing: When to offer a refund for advanced sales," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 471-491.
    11. Zhan Pang & Wenqiang Xiao & Xuying Zhao, 2021. "Preorder Price Guarantee in e-Commerce," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 123-138, 1-2.
    12. Pnina Feldman & Ella Segev, 2022. "The Important Role of Time Limits When Consumers Choose Their Time in Service," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6666-6686, September.
    13. Victor Aguirregabiria, 2006. "Another Look at the Identification of Dynamic Discrete Decision Processes: With an Application to Retirement Behavior," 2006 Meeting Papers 169, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Yamaguchi, Shintaro, 2010. "The effect of match quality and specific experience on career decisions and wage growth," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 407-423, April.
    15. Kemptner, Daniel & Tolan, Songül, 2018. "The role of time preferences in educational decision making," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 25-39.
    16. Michelle Sheran Sylvester, 2007. "The Career and Family Choices of Women: A Dynamic Analysis of Labor Force Participation, Schooling, Marriage and Fertility Decisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 367-399, July.
    17. Maria Casanova-Rivas, 2008. "Dynamic Complementarities: A Computational and Empirical Analysis of Couples' Retirement Decisions," 2008 Meeting Papers 1073, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Paulo Fagandini & Ingemar Dierickx, 2023. "Computing Profit-Maximizing Bid Shading Factors in First-Price Sealed-Bid Auctions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(3), pages 1009-1035, March.
    19. Norets, Andriy & Shimizu, Kenichi, 2024. "Semiparametric Bayesian estimation of dynamic discrete choice models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 238(2).
    20. Jeremy T. Fox, 2010. "Estimating the Employer Switching Costs and Wage Responses of Forward-Looking Engineers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 357-412, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2412.20285. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.