IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osk/wpaper/1027.html

The effects of costly exploration on optimal investment timing

Author

Listed:
  • Michi NISHIHARA

    (Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University)

  • Takashi SHIBATA

    (Graduate School of Social Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge)

Abstract

This paper investigates a principal-agent model in which an owner (principal) optimizes a contract with a manager (agent) delegated to undertake an investment project. In the model, we explore the effects of costly exploration by which the manager learns the real value of development cost. We show that high exploration cost can lead to a pooling policy not contingent on project type. Further, and more notably, we show that, in the presence of asymmetric information, higher exploration cost leads to wealth transfer from owner to manager and can then play a positive role in preventing a greedy contract by the owner and improving social welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Michi NISHIHARA & Takashi SHIBATA, 2010. "The effects of costly exploration on optimal investment timing," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 10-27, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:osk:wpaper:1027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.econ.osaka-u.ac.jp/library/global/dp/1027.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies

    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:osk:wpaper:1027. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: The Economic Society of Osaka University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feosujp.html .

    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.