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The executive stock option (ESO) valuation model developed in this research amends the popular exchange traded option pricing models such as Black and Scholes (1973), Whaley (1981), and Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein (1979) to include economic features of the ESO contract that previously have been ignored. One of these features is the non‐transferability of the ESO, which creates a situation where the ESO might be exercised when an otherwise identical exchange traded option would not. Another feature is the hybrid nature of the ESO; it is not solely either an American option or a European option. The results of the comparative statics indicate that the impact of the non‐transferability of the ESO value is significant, whereas the hybrid feature of the ESO results in values that are very similar to American option values. The economic implication is that if an American or European option model is used to value ESO's, the probability is very high that a wealth transfer between management and shareholders will occur.

The paper seeks to examine fair values provided by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and reported daily in the Australian Financial Review to determine whether they violate fundamental option relationships.

Values reported in the Australian Financial Review from 4 January 2005 to 31 March 2005 are examined.

The results document that between 1 and 2 per cent violate the most fundamental option relationships, specifically the requirement for call and put option values to increase as term to expiry increases, and for call (put) option values to increase (decrease) as exercise price decreases. Further, the magnitude of these violations is too large to be explained solely by the bid‐ask spread. They are, nevertheless, consistent with staleness. Further, in nearly 30 per cent of cases these fair values violate the basic put‐call parity relationship. The type of these violations is also consistent with these values being stale.

Simple screens should be included to remove fair values that breach the most basic relationships.

The paper is the first to highlight flaws in fair values provided by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and reported in the Australian Financial Review.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the models of Johnson and Stulz, Klein and Klein and lnglis to analyse the properties of vulnerable American options.

The presented model allows default prior to the maturity of the option based on a barrier which is linked to the payoff on the option. Various measures of risk denoted by the standard Greek letters are studied, as well as additional measures that arise because of the vulnerability.

The paper finds that the delta of a vulnerable American put does not always increase with the price of the underlying asset, and may be significantly smaller than that of a non‐vulnerable put. Because of deadweight costs associated with bankruptcy, delta and gamma are undefined for some values of the underlying asset. Rho may be considerably higher while vega may be smaller than for non‐vulnerable options. Also, the probability of early exercise for vulnerable American options is higher and the price of the underlying asset at which this is optimal depends on the degree of credit risk of the option writer.

This paper makes a contribution to understanding the effect of credit risk on option valuation.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the potential contribution of the option applications to economic instability. To this end, the chapter briefly reviews the extant literature on financial option pricing and its applications to corporate assets and liabilities. It focuses on the direct relationship between the volatility of the underlying asset and the value of the option. It shows that the theory of option applications by its one-sided emphasis on the value-creating role of volatility promotes excessive risk-taking. Then the chapter discusses how the theory of option applications through the educational system encourages economic agents to make excessively risky decisions. Furthermore, the interactions among these risk-welcoming agents lead to an economic system which becomes increasingly risky. This risky economy, combined with the fact that more than half of the value of the option applications is constituted by the highly volatile value of the options embedded in such applications, translates into wide variations in real investments and the economy.

This paper complements previous research on investment in firm-specific human capital by applying real options analysis. Our framework suggests that the parties receive valuable options to exit the contract when information becomes revealed in the future, but these options may be more valuable for one party than the other. Companies and workers attempt to reduce the value of the options through contractual mechanisms that either shift wealth to the party granting the option or prevent the option from being exercised. In both cases, the mechanisms cause the parties to invest in firm-specific capital, resulting in higher output and higher wages.

Analysis of Information Options offers new tools for evaluating investments in research, mineral exploration, logistics, energy transmission, and other information operations. With Information Options, the underlying assets are information assets and the rules governing exercise are based on the realities of the information realm (infosphere). Information Options can be modeled as options to “purchase” information assets by paying the cost of the information operations involved. Information Options arise at several stages of value creation. The initial stage involves observation of physical phenomena with accompanying data capture. The next refinement is to organize the data into structured databases. Then bits of information are selected from storage and synthesized into an information product (such as a management report). Next, the information product is presented to the user via an efficient interface that does not require the user to be a field expert. Information Options are similar in concept to real options but substantially different in their details, since real options have physical objects as the underlying assets and the rules governing exercise are based on the realities of the physical world. Also, while exercising a financial option typically kills the option, Information Options may include multiple exercises. Information Options may involve high volatility or jump processes as well, further enhancing their value. This chapter extends several important real option applications into the information realm, including jump process models and models for valuing options to synthesize any of n information items into any of m output assets.

In some contexts, this illiquidity of executive stock options is referred to as non-transferability. In others, the problem is cast in terms of the highly concentrated portfolios that managers hold, an implication of which is that managers could not trade the options to diversify. The notion of option liquidity usually conjures up images of trading pits at the Chicago Board Options Exchange or other exchanges. The existence of an active trading pit gives a powerful visual image of liquidity, but, as evidenced by the success of electronic options exchanges such as New York's International Securities Exchange and Frankfurt's EUREX, a trading pit is hardly a requirement for liquidity. The existence of a guaranteed market for standardized options as implied by options exchanges (whether pit-based or electronic) further gives a misleading appearance of high liquidity. There is also a very large market for customized over-the-counter options. It is a misconception to think that these options are not liquid when they are simply not standardized. If an investor can create a highly customized long position in an option, that investor should be able to create a highly customized short position in the same option at a later date before expiration. If both options are created through the same dealer, they will usually be treated as an offset, as they would if they were standardized options clearing through a clearinghouse. If the two transactions are not with the same dealer, they would both remain alive, but the market risks would offset. Only the credit risk, a factor we ignore in this paper, would remain. Hence, these seemingly illiquid options are, for all practical purposes, liquid.²

Option models have provided insight into the value of flexibility to switch from one state to another (such as switching a mine or refinery from operating to closed status). More complex flexible processes offer multiple possibilities for switching states. A fabrication facility, for example, may offer options to shift from the current status to any of several alternatives (reflecting reconfiguration of basic facilities to accommodate different operating processes with different outputs). New algorithms enable practical application of complex option pricing models to flexible facilities, improving analysts’ ability to draw sound conclusions about the effects of flexibility and innovativeness on share value. Such models also apply for options with information items as the underlying assets. Information organizations such as oil exploration and development companies may include options to shift from the current capability to any of several alternatives reflecting added abilities to handle new information sources or apply the organization’s talents in new ways. In the case of either physical or information processing, careful attention to estimating the matrix of correlations among the values of potential alternative states allows explicit integration of financial analysis and strategic analysis – especially the influence of substitutes and the anticipated reactions of competitors, suppliers, and potential new entrants.