We compare forecasts of the realized volatility of the pound, mark and yen exchange rates against the dollar, calculated from intraday rates, over horizons ranging from one day to three months. Our forecasts are obtained from a short memory ARMA model, a long memory ARFIMA model, a GARCH model and option implied volatilities. We find intraday rates provide the most accurate forecasts for the one-day and one-week forecast horizons while implied volatilities are at least as accurate as the historical forecasts for the one-month and three-month horizons. The superior accuracy of the historical forecasts, relative to implied volatilities, comes from the use of high frequency returns, and not from a long memory specification. We find significant incremental information in historical forecasts, beyond the implied volatility information, for forecast horizons up to one week.

We analyse the entry decisions of competing firms in a two-player stochastic real option game, when rivals earn different but correlated uncertain profitabilities from operating. In the presence of entry costs, decision thresholds exhibit hysteresis, the range of which is decreasing in the correlation between competing firms. A measure of the expected time of each firm being active in the market and the probability of both rivals entering within a finite time are explicitly calculated. The former (latter) is found to decrease (increase) with the volatility of relative firm profitabilities implying that market leadership is shorter-lived the more uncertain the industry environment. In an application of the model to the aircraft industry, we find that Boeing’s optimal response to Airbus’ launch of the A380 super carrier is to accommodate entry and supplement its current product line, as opposed to the riskier alternative of committing to the development of a corresponding super jumbo.