Investment under Uncertainty

Investment under Uncertainty PDF Author: Robert K. Dixit
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830176
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
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.

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit

Risk, Uncertainty and Profit PDF Author: Frank H. Knight
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602060053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fascinating and pertinent today, this is Frank Knight's famous explanation of why perfect competition cannot eliminate profits, the important differences between "risk" and "uncertainty," and the vital role of the entrepreneur in profitmaking. Based on Knight's PhD dissertation, this 1921 work, balancing theory with fact to come to stunning insights, is a distinct pleasure to read. FRANK H. KNIGHT (1885-1972) is considered by some the greatest American scholar of economics of the 20th century. An economics professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 until 1955, he was one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, which influenced Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

The Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty

The Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty PDF Author: Iraj Fooladi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Uncertainty
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description


Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty

Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty PDF Author: Kishor Kumar Gharana
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description


Generalized Expected Utility Theory

Generalized Expected Utility Theory PDF Author: John Quiggin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792393023
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Economic analysis of choice under uncertainty has been dominated by the expected utility (EU) model, yet the EU model has never been without critics. Psychologists accumulated evidence that individual choices under uncertainty were inconsistent with the predictions of the EU model. Applied work in areas such as finance was dominated by the simpler mean-variance analysis. In the 1980s this skepticism was dispelled as a number of generalizations of EU were proposed, most of which were capable of explaining evidence inconsistent with EU, while preserving transitivity and dominance. Generalized expected utility is now a flourishing subfield of economics, with dozens of competing models and considerable literature exploring their theoretical properties and comparing their empirical performance. But the EU model remains the principal tool for the analysis of choice under uncertainty. There is a view that generalized models are too difficult to handle or incapable of generating sharp results. This creates a need to show that the new models can be used in the kinds of economic analysis for which EU has been used, and that they can yield new and interesting results. This book meets this need by describing one of the most popular generalized models -- the rank-dependent expected utility model (RDEU), also known as anticipated utility, EU with rank-dependent preferences, the dual theory of choice under uncertainty, and simply as rank-dependent utility. As the many names indicate, the model has been approached in many ways by many scientists and for this reason, consideration of a single model sheds light on many of the concerns that have motivated the development of generalized utility models. The popularity of the RDEU model rests on its simplicity and tractability. The standard tools of analysis developed for EU theory may be applied to the RDEU model, but since RDEU admits behavior inconsistent with EU, the field of potential applications is widened. As such, the RDEU model is not as much a competitor to EU as an extension based on less restrictive assumptions.

Decision Making Under Risk and Uncertainty

Decision Making Under Risk and Uncertainty PDF Author: J. Geweke
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789401052610
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
As desired, the infonnation demand correspondence is single valued at equilibrium prices. Hence no planner is needed to assign infonnation allocations to individuals. Proposition 4. For any given infonnation price system p E . P (F *), almost every a E A demands a unique combined infonnation structure (although traders may be indifferent among partial infonnation sales from different information allocations, etc. ). In particular, the aggregate excess demand correspondence for net combined infonnation trades is a continuous function. Proof Uniqueness fails only if an agent can obtain the same expected utility from two or more net combined infonnation allocations. If this happens, appropriate slight perturbations of personal probability vectors destroy the equality unless the utility functions and wealth allocations were independent across states. Yet, when utilities and wealths don't depend on states in S, no infonnation to distinguish the states is desired, so that the demand for such infonnation structures must equal zero. To show the second claim, recall that if the correspondence is single valued for almost every agent, then its integral is also single valued. Finally, note that an upper hemicontinuous (by Proposition 2) correspondence which is single valued everywhere is, in fact, a continuous function. [] REFERENCES Allen, Beth (1986a). "The Demand for (Differentiated) Infonnation"; Review of Economic Studies. 53. (311-323). Allen, Beth (1986b). "General Equilibrium with Infonnation Sales"; Theory and Decision. 21. (1-33). Allen, Beth (1990). "Infonnation as an Economic Commodity"; American Economic Review. 80. (268-273).

Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty

Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty PDF Author: Sandwip K. Das
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 38

Book Description


The Nature of the Firm

The Nature of the Firm PDF Author: Oliver E. Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195083569
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
This volume features a series of essays which arose from a conference on economics, addressing the question: what is the nature of the firm in economic analysis? This paperback edition includes the Nobel Lecture of R.N. Case.

Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models

Time, Ignorance, and Uncertainty in Economic Models PDF Author: Donald W. Katzner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472109383
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description
Formal economic analysis using Shackle's ideas of historical time and nonprobabilistic uncertainty

A Note on the Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty

A Note on the Theory of the Firm Under Uncertainty PDF Author: Moawia Alghalith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 4

Book Description
We show that the increase in price riskiness reduces the optimal output under increasing absolute risk aversion. That is, the marginal impact of the risk on output is independent of the type of absolute risk aversion (decreasing, constant, or increasing).