Optimal Sequential Investment When Capital is Not Readily Reversible
研究企业在投资机会逐一到来且需序贯决策时，若企业具有市场势力且投资不可逆，其最优投资策略会偏离标准净现值规则。通过马尔可夫报酬过程建模，推导寡头垄断企业（价格领导者）勘探项目的最优决策规则与价值。
When investment opportunities arrive one at a time and are reviewed sequentially, a corporation's optimal policy differs from a standard net present value rule if the corporation exercises control over an industry state variable and control is costly. The first condition presupposes a degree of market power for the firm; the second occurs if corporate investment decisions are imperfectly reversible. To address the problem of optimal investment in this context, a firm's investment decisions are modeled as a Markov reward process. The causes of economic irreversibility are discussed and general propositions concerning the optimal investment policy are derived. These propositions are then applied to the optimization of an exploration program by an oligopolistic firm (a price leader). Under particular demand and distributional assumptions, solutions for the optimal decision rule and the value of the exploration program are obtained and their properties examined.