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Briefly describes the nature and importance of capital investments and why managers of all functional areas should understand the basics of analysis. Reviews conceptual issues. Develops important perspectives for corporate leaders, managers and analysts. Provides practical guidelines for analysis. Furnishes a useful format for analysis easily adaptable to spreadsheet analysis. Illustrates techniques of analysis using a sample capital project. Interprets the results in a common‐sense manner and in terms of the contribution of the project to shareholder value. Addresses issues at a level appropriate for each professional manager regardless of their area of expertise and functional assignment.

The adoption of several basic financial management practices is examined for a group of New York dairy farms. The study provides estimates of the extent to which various business analysis and control, investment analysis and decision making, and capital acquisition practices have been adopted. Many practices, such as net present value analysis, are not widely adopted by farmers. The relationship between the adoption of financial management practices and farm profitability is also examined. Results suggest that the adoption of financial management practices, such as using investment analysis techniques, significantly impacts farm financial performance.

The purpose of this study is to review the capital budgeting literature over the past decade.

Specifically, over the years 2004–2013, we review works appearing in the major academic journals in accounting, finance, and management. Further, we review the specialized academic journals in management accounting. We examine the frequency of articles by journal and year published, the type of research method applied, and the topic area studied. We then review the research findings by topic area.

We find 110 articles appearing in the selected journals. While the articles increase in frequency, the research methods applied are predominantly analytical and archival in nature with relatively few experiments, case studies, or surveys. Some progress is observed for capital budgeting techniques and new methods for structuring uncertainty. The studies find that the size of capital budgets is about right for companies with high financial reporting quality, for liquid companies, during periods of normal cash flow, when the budget is financed by equity, for companies when they first go public or first go private. Tax rates and financial reporting methods for depreciation and tax expenses distort capital budgets. Organization structure and performance measurement can distort capital budgeting. Individual differences, especially optimism and honesty, can influence capital budgeting decisions.

This review is limited to the major journals in accounting, finance, and management; and the specialized journals in management accounting. There is much research to be done on capital budgeting, especially case studies of actual practice and experiments related to individual and group decision processes.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the increasing pressure on financial markets to more systematically value the intangible assets in listed firms.

Using qualitative research techniques on the trading floor of Merrill Lynch Investment Bank in Sydney and Hong Kong, four tools for human capital analysis have been developed by the authors.

These tools provide mechanisms for securities analysts to more systematically analyse the intangible aspects of publicly listed firms on global stock exchanges.

Given the complex regulatory requirements on securities analysts in many developed economies, these tools are predicated on analysts using publicly available information.

Specifically, the tools use a systems approach and can assist securities analysts to be more systematic in their analysis of management quality of publicly listed companies, as it is manifested in a firm's management systems.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are arguably one of the CEOs greatest challenges, and there is a critical need to get these decisions right. It is clear that no single theory is adequate to describe or inform how M&A are evaluated in uncertain conditions, but there are several that offer partial explanations or at least contribute toward our understanding of how managers can deal with the uncertain environment and assess the likely risks associated with M&A. The literature suggests how relevant theories might be aggregated to make sense of strategic investment decision and investment appraisal techniques in an organizational context and considers the implications for further research in this important area of M&A. This chapter focuses on strategic investment appraisal, and draws together a variety of theoretical perspectives, especially from the field of psychology, which may be unfamiliar to both scholars in and practitioners.

INTRODUCTION With the increasing importance of capital investment selection in modern business the field has attracted a large body of interest in the literature of the last two decades. It is the purpose of the survey to trace this development from the use of simple financial criteria for assessing investments to the use of more sophisticated financial measures, techniques for assessing risk in investments and finally complex models for selecting portfolios of investments.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate current techniques in capital budget decision making in Canada, including real options, and to integrate the results with similar previous studies.

A mail survey was conducted, which included 88 large firms in Canada.

Trends towards sophisticated techniques have continued; however, even in large firms, 17 percent did not use discounted cash flow (DCF). Of those which did, the majority favoured net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR). Overall between one in ten to one in three were not correctly applying certain aspects of DCF. Only 8 percent used real options.

One limitation is that the survey does not indicate why managers continue using less advanced capital budgeting decision techniques. A second is that choice of population may bias results to large firms in Canada.

The main area for management focus is real options. Other areas for improvement are administrative procedures, using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), adjusting the WACC for different projects or divisions, employing target or market values for weights, and not including interest expenses in project cash flows. A small proportion of managers also need to start using DCF.

The evaluation shows there still remains a theory‐practice gap in the detailed elements of DCF capital budgeting decision techniques, and in real options. Further, it is valuable to take stock of a concept that has been developed over a number of years. What this paper offers is a fine‐grained analysis of investment decision making, a synthesis and integration of several studies on DCF where new comparisons are made, advice to managers and thus opportunities to improve investment decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current trends of capital budgeting practices (analysis techniques, discount rate estimations and risk assessment methods) among Pakistani listed firms and analyze the responses conditional on firms’ demographics and executive characteristics.

An online questionnaire was sent via e-mail to top 200 non-financial firms (in terms of market capitalization) listed on Pakistan Stock Exchange.

With a response rate of 35 percent, it is concluded that the theory–practice gap is low as Pakistani listed firms are using discounted cash flow methods of capital budgeting and preferring net present value over internal rate of return. Similarly, weighted average cost of capital is estimated using target value weights, and capital asset pricing model (with extra risk factors) is used to determine the cost of equity capital. For risk assessment, sensitivity analysis and scenario analysis are the dominant approaches; however despite the theoretical superiority, the use of real options is very low. Overall, investment decision responses significantly differ across firm’s demographics and executive characteristics.

Pakistani business schools need to address the low usage of advanced methods such as modified internal rate of return and real options among Pakistani listed firms.

This is the first comprehensive study on the topic in Pakistan and have highlighted the areas of capital budgeting where Pakistani firms’ practices deviates from finance theory.

Interviews in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and India indicate net present value (NPV) is not widely employed in making capital investment decisions in these newly industrialized and developing countries. It is not from lack of knowledge about net present value: rather, it is due to (1) widespread violation of the assumptions underlying NPV, (2) the high risk/high return nature of the capital investments, and (3) the decision‐making process employed in making capital investment decisions. These same three conditions exist for many capital investment decisions made by firms in developed countries. Only by abandoning the static NPV approach, building in real options, and understanding and building in the decision‐making process will further advances be made in capital budgeting decision‐making. One of the key paradigms in finance is net present value (NPV). In order to maximize value, managers should accept all positive NPV investment projects, and reject all negative NPV projects. The issue becomes more complex when uncertainty is introduced, or, as in recent years, when real options to defer, abandon, expand, etc. are incorporated into the decision‐making process [e.g., Dixit and Pindyck (1994) and Trigeorgis (1995 and 1996)]. However, with these exceptions, the state of the art in capital investment decision‐making revolves around the simple statement—take all positive NPV projects. In practice, evidence from surveys and discussions with corporate executives indicates the message taught for the last 30 years in business schools has been heard and, to a large extent, acted upon by larger U.S., Canadian, and British‐based firms. While larger firms in North America, and to a lesser extent Western Europe, generally employ the static, or traditional, NPV framework for making, or assisting in making, capital investment decisions, less is known about the decision‐making process employed by firms in other parts of the world. The question addressed in this study is: “Do firms in other parts of the world, especially in newly industrialized or developing countries in the Asia Pacific region, employ NPV for making capital investment decisions?” The purposes of this study are threefold: (1) to report the results of a series of open‐ended interviews conducted in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and India about the capital investment decision‐making process employed; (2) to understand why NPV is not widely employed in making capital investment decisions in these newly industrialized and developing countries; and, most important, (3) to indicate that NPV and the capital budgeting decision‐making process need rethinking and refocusing to make them more effective—in all countries, whether developed, newly industrialized, or developing. The paper proceeds in the following manner. Section I provides an introduction to the study. In Section II the results of the interviews are presented. In Section III patterns that emerged during the interview process are presented, along with a number of specific examples of the types of capital investment decisions being considered. In Section IV the assumptions underlying NPV are examined, and then risk/return and the decision‐making process are considered. Section V contains the discussion and conclusions.

Explores approaches to the assessment of capital investment proposals, and proposes a systematic investment analysis model to classify projects, and to show the relationship between factors influencing an analysis as well as to indicate the range of information necessary for a satisfactory assessment. Also discusses criteria for acceptance of proposals to spend capital on productivity improvement methodologies presented in the form of decision trees.