Missed Opportunities: Optimal Investment Timing When Information is Costly
研究评估成本如何影响投资时机，发现评估成本高或评估能揭示大量信息时，立即投资更优；评估成本高但揭示信息少时，最优延迟更长。
Abstract Real option analysis typically assumes that projects are continuously evaluated and launched at precisely the time determined to be optimal, but real world projects cannot be managed in this way because of the costs of formally evaluating an investment opportunity. This paper shows that immediate investment is more attractive if evaluation costs are high or the amount of information to be revealed by an evaluation is large. The optimal delay until a reevaluation is long if evaluation costs are high or the amount of information to be revealed by an evaluation is small. The reduction in the value of project rights is especially severe when the value of the completed project is strongly mean reverting because then precision in investment timing is particularly important.