Investment is characterized by costly reversibility when a firm can purchase capital at a given price and sell capital at a lower price. We solve for the optimal investment of a firm that faces costly reversibility under uncertainty and we extend the Jorgensonian concept of the user cost of capital to this case. We define and calculate cU and cL as the user costs of capital associated with the purchase and sale of capital, respectively. Optimality requires the firm to purchase and sell capital as needed to keep the marginal revenue product of capital in the closed interval [cL, cU). This prescription encompasses the case of irreversible investment as well as the standard neoclassical case of costlessly reversible investment.

Capital investment decisions must recognize the limitations on the firm's ability to later sell or expand capacity. This paper shows how opportunities for future expansion or contraction can be valued as options, how their valuation relates to the q theory of investment, and their effect on the incentive to invest. Generally, the option to expand reduces the incentive to invest, while the option to disinvest raises it. We show how these options determine the effect of uncertainty on investment, how they are changed by shifts of the distribution of future profitability, and how the q-theory and option pricing approaches are related.