We solve an agent's optimization problem of meeting demands for cash over time with cash deposited in bank or invested in stock. The stock pays dividends and uncertain capital gains, and a commission is incurred in buying and selling of stock. We use a stochastic maximum principle to obtain...

This paper proposes a model for optimizing the duration of transition under the assumption that the government main goal is to minimize the social cost of reforms. At the beginning of transition there are two main sectors in the economy: an old technology sector - mainly the public one - where...

This paper shows that the notion of rate of return is best understood through the lens of the average-internal-rate-of-return (AIRR) model, first introduced in Magni (2010a). It is an NPV-consistent approach based on a coherent definition of rate of return and on the notion of Chisini mean, it...

This paper examines to what extent stock market anomalies are driven by firm fundamentals in an investment-based asset pricing framework. Using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), we estimate a two-capital q-model to match firm-level stock returns, instead of matching portfolio-level...

A deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing says that if an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor “rationality,” the relation must be “explained” by a risk (factor) model. The investment approach questions the doctrine. Factors formed on characteristics are...

A deep-ingrained doctrine in asset pricing says that if an empirical characteristic-return relation is consistent with investor “rationality,” the relation must be “explained” by a risk (factor) model. The investment approach questions the doctrine. Factors formed on characteristics are...

We find new facts that relate the evolution of firm scope to the changing frictions in external capital markets over the last three decades. We find that large, diversified publicly traded firms increase their scope during times of high external capital market frictions, such as in the recent...

We show that the standard analysis of vertical relationships transposes directly to investment dynamics. Thus, when a firm undertaking a project requires an outside supplier (e.g., an equipment manufacturer) to provide it with a discrete input to serve a growing but uncertain demand, and if the...

We offer a new perspective on games of irreversible investment under uncertainty in continuous time. The basis is a particular approach to solve the involved stochastic optimal control problems which allows to establish existence and uniqueness of an oligopolistic open loop equilibrium in a very...

We establish explicit socially optimal rules for an irreversible investment decision with time-to-build and uncertainty. Assuming a price sensitive demand function with a random intercept, we provide comparative statics and economic interpretations for three models of demand (arithmetic...