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Optimal Investment Under Operational Flexibility, Risk Aversion, And Uncertainty, Michail Chronopoulos, Bert De Reyck, Afzal Siddiqui

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Traditional real options analysis addresses the problem of investment under uncertainty assuming a risk-neutral decision maker and complete markets. In reality, however, decision makers are often risk averse and markets are incomplete. We confirm that risk aversion lowers the probability of investment and demonstrate how this effect can be mitigated by incorporating operational flexibility in the form of embedded suspension and resumption options. Although such options facilitate investment, we find that the likelihood of investing is still lower compared to the risk-neutral case. Risk aversion also increases the likelihood that the project will be abandoned, although this effect is less …