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What Makes And What Does Not Make A Real Option? A Study Of International Joint Ventures, Ilya Cuypers, Xavier Martin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the boundaries of real options logic, with an application to joint ventures (JVs). We distinguish between forms of uncertainty that are resolved endogenously and those that are resolved exogenously, and theorize that only exogenous uncertainty will have the impact predicted by real options theory on a foreign investor's choice of how large an equity share to take in a JV. We theorize that macroeconomic and institutional variables generate exogenous uncertainty whereas, by contrast, cultural distance and choices pertaining to corporate scope and product or process development activities involve endogenous sources of uncertainty that investors can both assess …