scholarly journals Correcting for Hubris in Project Appraisal

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Jacques A. Schnabel

Behavioral finance research stresses the prevalence of overconfidence in capital budgeting practices. To remedy this shortcoming, specifically the upward bias in cash flow forecasts, the extant literature emphasizes the reduction of such forecasts. This paper considers the conditions under which a different adjustment is warranted, namely, an upward correction in the hurdle rate employed to evaluate the project. It is argued here that if adverse events can have a long-term, versus a merely transitory, deleterious effect on the project's cash flows, the second adjustment is appropriate.

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 1259-1294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudipto Dasgupta ◽  
Thomas H. Noe ◽  
Zhen Wang

AbstractThis paper documents the short- and long-term balance sheet effect of cash flows. We show that cash savings in the short run and debt reduction in both the short and the long run account for a substantial fraction of cash flow use. Although, in the long run, investment exhibits substantial sensitivity to cash flows, investment does not absorb the entire cash flow shock. In fact, the tighter the financial constraints, the smaller the fraction of cash flow absorbed by investment and the more by leverage reduction. Firms stage their response to increases in cash flow, delaying investment while building up cash stocks and reducing leverage. These results suggest that much of the short-run economic effect of cash flow shocks to the corporate sector may be channeled into the corporate debt market rather than the capital goods market, especially when financing constraints tighten.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 4832
Author(s):  
Jaehong Lee ◽  
Eunsoo Kim

A company’s sustainability is generally determined by whether it is able to create a positive long-term cash flow. This paper investigates whether the predictive ability of cash flows and earnings in forecasting future cash flows differs depending on the foreign investors’ ownership. Based on firms listed in the Korea Stock Exchange market from 2000 to 2017, we find that earnings and cash flow components of financial statements enhance the predictability of future cash flow in the Korean stock market. Conversely, foreign investors showed a tendency to decide on investments based on operating cash flow instead of earnings when predicting future cash flow. These findings indicate that reliability towards earnings may fall since foreign investors’ concerns are on the prospects of earnings management. These results were strengthened by the addition of several more analyses including cluster analyses, consideration of information asymmetry and the chaebol governance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zulfiqar Ali Memon ◽  
Yan Chen ◽  
Muhammad Zubair Tauni ◽  
Hashmat Ali

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of cash flow volatility on firm’s leverage levels. It also analyzes how cash flow volatility influences the debt maturity structure for the Chinese listed firms. Design/methodology/approach The authors construct the measure for cash flow variability as five-year rolling standard deviation of the cash flow from operations. The authors use generalized linear model approach to determine the effect of volatility on leverage. In addition, the authors design a categorical debt maturity variable and assign categories depending upon firm’s usage of debt at various maturity levels. The authors apply Ordered Probit regression to analyze how volatility affects firm’s debt maturity structure. The authors lag volatility and other independent variables in the estimation models so as to eliminate any possible endogeneity problems. Finally, the authors execute various techniques for verifying the robustness of the main findings. Findings The authors provide evidence that higher volatility of cash flows results in lower leverage levels, while the sub-sampling analysis reveals that there is no such inverse association in the case of Chinese state-owned enterprises. The authors also provide novel findings that irrespective of the ownership structure, firms facing high volatility choose debt of relatively shorter maturities and vice versa. Overall, a rise of one standard deviation in volatility causes 8.89 percent reduction in long-term market leverage ratio and 26.62 percent reduction in the likelihood of issuing debentures or long-term notes. Research limitations/implications This study advocates that cash flow volatility is an essential factor for determining both the debt levels and firm’s term-to-maturity structure. The findings of this study can be helpful for the financial managers in maintaining optimal leverage and debt maturity structure, for lenders in reducing their risk of non-performing loans and for investors in their decision-making process. Originality/value Existing empirical literature regarding the influence of variability of cash flows on leverage and debt maturity structure is inconclusive. Moreover, prior research studies mainly focus only on the developed countries. No previous comprehensive study exists so far for Chinese firms in this regard. This paper endeavors to fulfill this research gap by furnishing novel findings in the context of atypical and distinctive institutional setup of Chinese firms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-158
Author(s):  
Serhii Onikiienko ◽  
Yevheniia Polishchuk ◽  
Alla Ivashenko ◽  
Anna Kornyliuk ◽  
Nazar Demchyshak

Over the past three decades, the relative bank loan demand has changed due to the arising small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, banks in their operations face the problem of processing an ever-increasing number of loan applications. The aim of this paper is to develop an auxiliary approach to assessing the prior creditworthiness of long-term SME projects with nonstandard cash flows.This study reveals how the principles of value-based management can be incorporated into the process of borrower’s creditworthiness assessment to improve the process of screening loan applications. For this, the internal rate of return was used as a criterion for loan granting decision at the initial stage of loan underwriting.An algorithm for the preliminary evaluation of loan applications is proposed and is based on the principle of maximizing the shareholder value of banks. This algorithm helps to define the credit terms taking into consideration the distribution of positive cash flows throughout the project’s expected economic life, calculate the possible real effective interest rate concerning the borrower’s nonstandard cash flow schedule, make a rough analysis on the economic efficiency of lending and state the necessary criterion to initiate the procedure of loan underwriting for the projects with nonstandard cash flow schedules. The proposed estimation algorithm stemming from the IRR-approach for the cash flow analysis can also be initially used by a borrower as a tool for credit solvency self-testing via screening of periods with corresponding cash flows that can be used for loan servicing.


2017 ◽  
Vol null (71) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
심준용 ◽  
윤용석 ◽  
ChoiWooseok

2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre D. Chateau

Abstract The financial model presented in the article attempts to further integrate capital budgeting into the firm's overall financial planning policy. Although it is an extension and generalization of Bernhard and Weingartner's previous models, it differs from these works by some basic assumptions related to both the objective function and constraint set. First, the objective function stresses the growing role of managerial discretion as opposed to the common assumption of maximizing shareholders' wealth. In particular we assume that managers wish to maximize the size of the firm under their control at the end of some future time horizon. Since net cash flows of the investment projects selected are sources of future investment funds, the managers try to keep the shareholders' dividends to a minimum level, sufficient enough however to pacify them. Secondly, the model constraints embody the complete set of financial instruments available to the corporation managers: in a sense, this enlarges the previous models' short-term external financing facilities by considering simultaneously the alternative long-term external financial instruments, namely equity and bond issues. In the latter case, the refunding features are incorporated in the constraints. The constraints also imply that managers prefer steady growth of net cash flows through time. This contrasts with the usual maximization approach which has been shown to favor long-term investment projects with somewhat more erratic net cash flows. The derivation of the Kuhn and Tucker conditions for the model allows us to show the impact of the opportunity cost of the various instruments on that of the liquidity requirement and the investment projects selection criterion. Finally, the duality properties also highlight the reciprocal relationships existing between the various opportunity costs, both internal and external.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 128-135
Author(s):  
Mia Juliani ◽  
Raden Aswin Rahadi

The purpose of this study was to know the factor that can be improved in the financial performance of Nasho. Nasho is a brand that focuses on offering products for eyeglass and helmet application that can be water, dew and dust repellent by utilizing the application of nanotechnology in the scope market of Bandung. However, to adapt the technology for Nasho is currently hampered by the limited capital to develop the technology itself. The company needs to manage the capital and minimize the cost to optimize the finance. The company needs to control the cost and expenses to avoid the high number of costs and expenses in terms of the development business stage. The research will use a qualitative approach by conducting interviews to Mr. Reza optics that will cooperate with Nasho to sell the product and use secondary data information from literature review, journal, books and primary data from financial history of Nasho and survey from the consumer of Nasho namely College student, Medical staff and Motorcycle riders and the components that are relevant to the conceptual framework. Survey used to get the consumer product and buying tendency information from Nasho’s consumer to validate the assumption of brand, price and buying intencity. Interview was conducted to get the suitable number of sales that are being used for cash flow forecasting scenario. The findings of this research is Nasho had low financial performance in the first two years of the business. After the evaluation, this can be improved by making a financial planning mix for short term and long term using the capital budgeting method in the form of three optimal scenarios of cash flow, Net Present Value (NPV), IRR and payback period that can be used as an optimal plan to run this business for the next five years.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Turner

Many introductory finance texts present information on the capital budgeting process, including estimation of project cash flows.  Typically, estimation of project cash flows begins with a calculation of net income.  Getting from net income to cash flows requires accounting for non-cash items such as depreciation.  Also important is the effect of changes in net operating working capital on cash flow.  While students readily understand how to account for depreciation when calculating cash flow, they typically have much more difficulty understanding how and why changes in working capital affect cash flows.  This paper develops a teaching example to show exactly how and why changes in net operating working capital affect cash flows.  The example shows how to derive operating cash flows for a proposed project using the accrual accounting method and then shows a cash budget for the same project.  Finally, the example shows that the discrepancy between the cash flows shown in the cash budget and the operating cash flows can be resolved by accounting for changes in working capital.  A survey of students in an MBA managerial finance course indicates student satisfaction with the teaching example and gives evidence that students prefer the teaching example to explanations of the effect of working capital on project cash flows given in the assigned text.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seokwoo Lee ◽  
Alejandro Rivera

We consider the optimal dynamic liquidity management of a financially constrained firm when its existing shareholders are risk neutral but ambiguity averse with respect to the firm’s future cash flows. The shareholders’ ambiguity aversion generates endogenous time-varying worst-case beliefs that overweight recent cash flow realizations, thereby providing a microeconomic foundation for extrapolation bias. Moreover, shareholders’ ambiguity aversion has different implications on firms’ liquidity management and recapitalization policies than risk. Models with risk alone imply that higher cash flow volatility increases firms’ payout and refinancing thresholds. By contrast, our model predicts that, when ambiguity-averse shareholders face a higher long-term cash flow uncertainty, they optimally reduce firms’ payout and refinancing thresholds. The implications for investment are also studied. This paper was accepted by Agostino Capponi, finance.


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