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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 33 No. 7 2020

The Value of Green Energy: Optimal Investment in Mutually Exclusive Projects and Operating Leverage

Jérôme Detemple1; Yerkin Kitapbayev2

1 Questrom School of Business, Boston University · 2 Sloan School of Management, MIT

Abstract

We study investments in exclusive projects with different cost structures. Our analysis incorporates the possibility of producing a stochastic revenue stream from two alternative technologies with a stochastic variable cost and a fixed cost, respectively, and accounts for project managers’ endogenous operating decisions. The optimal investment decision is characterized by two possibly nonmonotone boundaries. We examine the effect of operating leverage on managerial policies, investment decisions, and values and carry out an application to power generation projects. We assess the impact of knowledge acquisition, that is, investments in growth options.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhz097
Volume
33
Issue
7
Pages
3307-3347
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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