Investment Expectations And Uncertainty

How should firms decide whether and when to invest in new capital equipment, additions to their workforce, or the development of new products? Why have traditional economic models of investment failed to explain the behavior of investment spending in the United States and other countries? In this book, Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck provide the first detailed exposition of a new theoretical approach to the capital investment decisions of firms, stressing the irreversibility of most investment decisions, and the ongoing uncertainty of the economic environment in which these decisions are made. In so doing, they answer important questions about investment decisions and the behavior of investment spending. This new approach to investment recognizes the option value of waiting for better (but never complete) information. It exploits an analogy with the theory of options in financial markets, which permits a much richer dynamic framework than was possible with the traditional theory of investment. The authors present the new theory in a clear and systematic way, and consolidate, synthesize, and extend the various strands of research that have come out of the theory. Their book shows the importance of the theory for understanding investment behavior of firms; develops the implications of this theory for industry dynamics and for government policy concerning investment; and shows how the theory can be applied to specific industries and to a wide variety of business problems.

Irreversible investment is especially sensitive to such risk factors as volatile exchange rates and uncertainty about tariff structures and future cash flows. If the goal of macroeconomic policy is to stimulate investment, stability and credibility may be more important than tax incentives or interest rates.

In this entertaining and thoughtful book, Gerald Ashley sets out to explain what trading is, and lays out a modus operandi for being a trader and investor. He draws upon market anecdotes and examples from the past, seeking to debunk many myths surrounding financial markets, and to try and make the reader understand the real processes, risks and rewards that drive investment. In particular he examines ideas in market and individual investor behaviour, and questions the usefulness of many of todays standard investment techniques including benchmarks, charts, analysts and 'gurus'. He also lays out simple precepts for understanding investment risk and suggests ideas for managing your investments in today's markets.

Eric Barthalon applies the neglected theory of psychological time and memory decay of Nobel Prize–winning economist Maurice Allais (1911–2010) to model investors' psychology in the present context of recurrent financial crises. Shaped by the behavior of the demand for money during episodes of hyperinflation, Allais's theory suggests economic agents perceive the flow of clocks' time and forget the past at a context-dependent pace: rapidly in the presence of persistent and accelerating inflation and slowly in the event of the opposite situation. Barthalon recasts Allais's work as a general theory of "expectations" under uncertainty, narrowing the gap between economic theory and investors' behavior. Barthalon extends Allais's theory to the field of financial instability, demonstrating its relevance to nominal interest rates in a variety of empirical scenarios and the positive nonlinear feedback that exists between asset price inflation and the demand for risky assets. Reviewing the works of the leading protagonists in the expectations controversy, Barthalon exposes the limitations of adaptive and rational expectations models and, by means of the perceived risk of loss, calls attention to the speculative bubbles that lacked the positive displacement discussed in Kindleberger's model of financial crises. He ultimately extrapolates Allaisian theory into a pragmatic approach to investor behavior and the natural instability of financial markets. He concludes with the policy implications for governments and regulators. Balanced and coherent, this book will be invaluable to researchers working in macreconomics, financial economics, behavioral finance, decision theory, and the history of economic thought.

Analyzes capital investment as a process in which an individual, entrepreneur, or organization comes to understand "value" before making a choice. Runge, an economist and mining engineer based in Australia, maintains that subjective value and uncertainty inform investment decision-making far more than the calculus of simple neoclassical choice suggests. His model of the capital investment process within a firm analyzes uncertainty and where it translates into risk. Runge sets out theories and tools for choosing between alternatives with differing risk and return profiles. His model provides a framework for decision-making that can lead to choices with lower overall risk, higher returns, and increased value. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

This book presents an up-to-date overview of the theory as well as the empirics of the relationship between investment, financial imperfections and uncertainty. After reviewing the capital market imperfections literature and the empirical results, the authors discuss both traditional investment models with uncertainty and the more modern option based models. They present an overview of empirical results of the modelling of investment under uncertainty. In these examples the effects of capital market imperfections on investment are carefully considered. The authors conclude that there is overwhelming empirical support for a negative uncertainty-investment relationship. This book should appeal to academics with an interest in investment theory, professionals in the financial sector and students of macroeconomics and finance. "Investment, Capital Market Imperfections, and Uncertainty" assumes only a basic knowledge of mathematics and is easily accessible.

Looking decades ahead into the future, many informed observers see China moving steadily to the top of the world's economic league. Several sources, including the OECD, forecast that the country will be the world's largest economy by 2020. China's urban economy has been the driving force behind the country's recent trends of accelerated growth. By the same token, deterioration in the urban centers could constrain future growth. The Dynamics of Urban Growth in Three Chinese Cities looks at the interplay between geography, size, and industrial structure that determines the industrial vigor of cities. Their conclusions, abundantly illustrated through the experience of the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou, is that each of these factors must be made to work for the city through effective policymaking. The authors compare these cities with each other in the context of the changes sweeping China's economy, review their history and their reform programs from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, and examine their infrastructure and human capital. The volume includes maps of the cities and their outlying areas and of China's road and rail system, as well as figures depicting the industrial structure of each city. Published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press.