THE CAPITAL INVESTMENT PROJECT AS A SET OF EXCHANGE OPTIONS Available to Purchase

Models for valuing an option to exchange one commodity for another, or any combination of n commodities for some combination of m others, are applied to the capital budgeting problem. By analyzing a project in the exchange option pricing framework, it is possible to draw wellfounded conclusions about the effects on project value of such attributes as flexibility and innovativeness. A project which uses systems that have many alternative uses is recognized by such analysis to be more valuable than an otherwise identical project which uses very specialized systems, because the former provides a greater array of choices. Likewise, a company which thinks of a new use for some kind of system will be able to generate a project which has a higher value than any other company could generate from the same system. By including divestiture as one of the alternatives in the portfolio of options representing a project, it is possible to incorporate project abandonment into the analysis, which is an improvement over earlier methodologies which simply add the value of the “abandonment option” to the discounted cash flow net present value. Finally, shortcomings of the options approach to capital budgeting are discussed.