Which of the following procedures does the text say is used most frequently by businesses when they do capital budgeting analyses?

The firm’s corporate, or overall, WACC is used to discount all project cash flows to find the projects’ NPVs.  Then, depending on how risky different projects are judged to be, the calculated NPVs are scaled up or down to adjust for differential risk.

Differential project risk cannot be accounted for by using “risk-adjusted discount rates” because it is highly subjective and difficult to justify.  It is better to not risk adjust at all.

Other things held constant, if returns on a project are thought to be positively correlated with the returns on other firms in the economy, then the project’s NPV will be found using a lower discount rate than would be appropriate if the project’s returns were negatively correlated.

Monte Carlo simulation uses a computer to generate random sets of inputs, those inputs are then used to determine a trial NPV, and a number of trial NPVs are averaged to find the project’s expected NPV.  Sensitivity and scenario analyses, on the other hand, require much more information regarding the input variables, including probability distributions and correlations among those variables.  This makes it easier to implement a simulation analysis than a scenario or a sensitivity analysis, hence simulation is the most frequently used procedure.

DCF techniques were originally developed to value passive investments (stocks and bonds).  However, capital budgeting projects are not passive investments–managers can often take positive actions after the investment has been made that alter the cash flow stream.  Opportunities for such actions are called real options.  Real options are valuable, but this value is not captured by conventional NPV analysis.  Therefore, a project’s real options must be considered separately.