David Johnstone

Public Sector Outsourcing as an Exchange Option

The outsourcing of government activities is justified primarily by expected cost savings. In the formal process of determining whether there are potential savings from contracting out, public sector agencies in Australia are required by published government guidelines to measure the relevant costs of in-house activities and to compare these with external bids. Similar and in technical respects essentially identical requirements exist in Great Britain. The cost comparison methodology advocated in these various publications is deficient in that it makes no allowance for the financial value of the option to contract out. Like other options, the option to contract out provides a hedge against uncertainty, and is all the more valuable the more uncertain (less predictable) the agencys future costs of in-house and external service arrangements. In the face of inherently uncertain cost streams, there is something to be said for conserving all available options. By interpreting the option to contract out as a financial asset with theoretically measurable value, arguments for government agencies maintaining at least some in-house capabilities are given a basis in rational economics.

Replacement Cost Asset Valuation and Regulation of Energy Infrastructure Tariffs

In Australia, access tariffs (rental charges) paid by third party users to the owners of energy transmission assets (e.g., gas pipelines) are determined by regulators on the basis of their depreciated optimized replacement cost (known as DORC). Reliance on the replacement cost, rather than actual cost, of existing assets inflates tariffs and incites the criticism that asset owners earn a return on investments of a scale never made. The economic rationale of the regulators model is that it emulates the workings of a contestable market, by setting tariffs at a level just short of that required to motivate a new entrant (system duplication). Properly reconstructed, this model constitutes a dynamic and internally consistent theory of replacement cost valuation and depreciation. Its mathematical consequences, however, especially with regard to the valuation of sunk assets with long times to expiry, are shown to be practically and politically unpalatable. In particular, the implied tariff levels for such assets are very close to those that would apply to new infrastructure assets built today at todays prices. Regulators unwilling to accept this implication of a new-entrant-exclusion pricing logic are left with no alternative framework for DORC.

Behavioral and prescriptive explanations of a reverse sunk cost effect

The all too common sunk cost effect is apparent when an investor influenced by what has been spent already persists in a venture, committing further resources or foregoing more profitable opportunities, when the economically rational action is to quit. Less common but arguably just as much a sunk cost effect is the mistake of giving up on a failed or failing venture too readily, sometimes out of nothing but pique at what has been lost, or perhaps through the more subtle psychological forces posited by Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler and others within prospect theory and related work on ``mental budgeting. Two case examples are considered, wherein decision makers dissatisfied with the results of their investments, and having lost money, appear to compound their losses by selling out at prices less than their own estimates of the remaining financial worth of the failed assets. These decisions are evaluated from the perspectives of both behavioral and prescriptive economics, and are found to have possible explanations in both. Their prescriptive rationale assumes a portfolio theory of investment decisions, and is demonstrated within both expected utility (economics) and mean-variance (finance) frameworks.

A Prospect Theory Explanation of the Disposition to Trade Losing Investments for Less Than Market Price

Investors have a proven general reluctance to realize losses. The theory of “mental accounting” suggests that losses are easier to accept when mentally integrated with either preceding losses or with compensatory gains. Mental integration is made easier when a failed asset is exchanged against a new, apparently profitable, acquisition. The alternative is to sell the existing asset on the open market before re-investing the proceeds as desired. This is emotionally less appealing than “rolling over” a losing investment into a new venture by way of an asset trade. The psychological benefits of exchanging rather than selling a failed asset come at a cost. It is typical of trade-in arrangements, e.g., where one trades an old car against a new one, that the effective sale price of the existing asset is less than current market value. Acceptance of this low price adds to the investors total monetary loss on the existing asset but is essential to an overall package deal apart from which that asset would often remain belatedly unsold.

A PARADOX OF DIMINISHING EXPECTATIONS AND INCREASING VALUE FOR MONEY

Investments made in the form of a succession of nonrefundable cash payments, with payoff at completion and no obligation at any stage to complete, have the characteristic of becoming more attractive as more payments are made. This is on the condition that any decline in the investors expectations occurs at a slower rate than the reduction between installments in the cost-to-complete. Decision makers involved in such investments have rational grounds for completion despite their possibly much diminished expectations. Interestingly, however, the reasons for completion cited by students in informal surveys have more generally to do with the cost already incurred and liable to be “wasted” than the cost remaining to completion. This is further evidence of the so-called “sunk cost effect.”