Essays on Investment Efficiency and Timing

A standard framework for the analysis of investment opportunities in the literature of corporate finance is the real options approach. The real options approach examines the value and timing of investment projects building on the idea that the opportunity to invest in a project is analogous to a financial option on a real asset. This means that, when evaluating an investment opportunity characterized by uncertainty and irreversibility, the potential investor needs to factor in that, at the time of the investment, s/he forgoes the option to postpone the investment decision for some future time point when the uncertainty will be, naturally, partly resolved. With the real options approach as a starting point, this thesis is comprised by three papers examining primarily investments undertaken in a supply-chain setting (paper 1 and paper 2) and, secondarily, projects aiming at land development (paper 3).