La teoria dell'investimento irreversibile

Irreversibility is an important feature of the accumulation of capital. The cost of an investment cannot be completely recovered once it is installed, because generally the capital goods acquired by a firm are industry specific. It is very difficult to sell them in bad states of the world when fire sales prevail. So the rate of return required has to be superior to the opportunity cost linked to a viable disinvestment. This threshold return is closely related to the increasing uncertainty, when the probability of negative events increases. In this environment a firm can delay the investment and wait for new(and better) information about the future. So the firm with an opportunity to invest owns an asset that looks like an option call and irreversible investments can be valued by using option pricing models.