We investigate the optimal investment timing strategy in a real option framework. Depending on the state of the economy, whose changes are modeled by a Markov chain, the investment cost can take one of two values. The optimal investment timing decision is determined by finding the free boundary...

Using a large sample of firms from 43 markets, we find significant time-series variations in firms’ leverage ratios around the world. Industry median leverage ratios and aggregate leverage ratios also change substantially over time. Relative to actual leverage ratios, target leverage ratios...