The post Dual Submission Decisions for Jackson Hole Finance Conference 2023 first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

The post Forthcoming Paper first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

Recent estimates suggest that the cost of developing a single new drug in the biopharmaceutical sector is $2.6 billion, confirming the very large amounts of money that medical companies invest to develop a new treatment. Biomedical companies also face the risk of very low rates of success, not only due to the inherent scientific risk of developing new drugs, but also due to the risk of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulatory approval process. The question that ought to be asked is what financial markets can do to promote more efficient risk sharing in the healthcare and drug development areas from which our societies can benefit. This is the question investigated by Adam Jørring, Andrew Lo, Tomas Philipson, Manita Singh, and Richard Thakor in their paper “Sharing R&D Risk in Healthcare via FDA Hedges.” They address the problem highlighted by many in the medical fields that investors are unwilling to provide financing due to these risks, resulting in a “funding gap” and underinvestment in biomedical R&D that causes many potentially valuable drugs either not being realized or not pursued beyond a certain stage. The authors propose a new form of financial instrument, FDA hedges, which allow biomedical R&D investors to share the pipeline risk associated with the FDA approval process with capital markets. Such instruments are shown to avoid the market failure that leads to an R&D “funding gap.” Using FDA approval data, the authors discuss the pricing of FDA hedges and mechanisms by which they can be traded and use novel panel dataset of FDA approval probabilities to explore the risks inherent in these contracts. The paper finds evidence that the risk associated with FDA hedges is mostly idiosyncratic, and argue that these instruments are appealing to both investors and issuers. Ultimately, FDA hedges should accelerate the development of new biomedical products by providing the necessary funding to support such risky projects, and will undoubtedly improve the health of countless patients. The significant social welfare implications are very clear for all of us.

Spotlight by Andrew Ellul
Photos courtesy of Adam Jørring, Andrew W. Lo, Tomas J. Philipson, Manita Singh, and Richard T. Thakor
First published December 10, 2021

The post Paper Spotlight: Sharing R&D Risk in Healthcare via FDA Hedges first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

The post RCFS Award Winners at the Cavalcade first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

The winners of the best paper awards at the CSEF-RCFS Conference on Finance, Labor, and Inequality are:

The post Best Paper Awards at CSEF-RCFS Conference on Labor, Finance, and Inequality first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

The post Dual Submission Decisions for Future of Financial Information Conference first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

Why do firms in the same industry often have different leverage levels? In their paper “Optimal Capital Structure with Imperfect Competition,” Egor Matveyev and Alexei Zhdanov show that strategic interaction alone can generate this difference. The authors first exhibit a theoretical model in which two ex ante identical firms are deciding when to enter an industry and also how much debt to issue. The product price depends both on the aggregate quantity and on a stochastic shock to the demand curve. In the overall equilibrium of the model, one firm (which becomes an incumbent) enters in a relatively low demand state with a correspondingly low amount of debt. The second firm, the new entrant, enters the industry in a high demand state, and with more debt than the incumbent. Thus, not only do ex ante identical firms in the industry have different leverage levels, but a sharper prediction emerges: Younger firms are more levered than older ones. As a result, younger firms are more likely to fall into financial distress. Further, the dispersion in leverage naturally relates to industry features such as cash flow volatility, tax rate, and bankruptcy costs. The authors then test these predictions on U.S. public firms. Indeed, as predicted by the model, leverage is negatively correlated with firm age, and firms that go bankrupt tend to be younger. To study leverage dispersion, they construct pairs of firms that are close rivals within each industry, and find that leverage dispersion is positively related to cash flow volatility, and negatively to tax rates and asset tangibility. Overall, the empirical results support the idea that strategic interaction is an important driver of differences in leverage.

Spotlight by Uday Rajan
Photos courtesy of Egor Matveyev and Alexei Zhdanov
First published February 4, 2022

The post Paper Spotlight: Optimal Capital Structure with Imperfect Competition first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

The post Forthcoming Paper first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

Recent estimates suggest that the cost of developing a single new drug in the biopharmaceutical sector is $2.6 billion, confirming the very large amounts of money that medical companies invest to develop a new treatment. Biomedical companies also face the risk of very low rates of success, not only due to the inherent scientific risk of developing new drugs, but also due to the risk of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulatory approval process. The question that ought to be asked is what financial markets can do to promote more efficient risk sharing in the healthcare and drug development areas from which our societies can benefit. This is the question investigated by Adam Jørring, Andrew Lo, Tomas Philipson, Manita Singh, and Richard Thakor in their paper “Sharing R&D Risk in Healthcare via FDA Hedges.” They address the problem highlighted by many in the medical fields that investors are unwilling to provide financing due to these risks, resulting in a “funding gap” and underinvestment in biomedical R&D that causes many potentially valuable drugs either not being realized or not pursued beyond a certain stage. The authors propose a new form of financial instrument, FDA hedges, which allow biomedical R&D investors to share the pipeline risk associated with the FDA approval process with capital markets. Such instruments are shown to avoid the market failure that leads to an R&D “funding gap.” Using FDA approval data, the authors discuss the pricing of FDA hedges and mechanisms by which they can be traded and use novel panel dataset of FDA approval probabilities to explore the risks inherent in these contracts. The paper finds evidence that the risk associated with FDA hedges is mostly idiosyncratic, and argue that these instruments are appealing to both investors and issuers. Ultimately, FDA hedges should accelerate the development of new biomedical products by providing the necessary funding to support such risky projects, and will undoubtedly improve the health of countless patients. The significant social welfare implications are very clear for all of us.

Spotlight by Andrew Ellul
Photos courtesy of Adam Jørring, Andrew W. Lo, Tomas J. Philipson, Manita Singh, and Richard T. Thakor
First published December 10, 2021

The post Paper Spotlight: Sharing R&D Risk in Healthcare via FDA Hedges first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.

Leveraged buyouts by private equity funds have been a constant, and growing, phenomenon in corporate finance over the last two decades and their importance is likely to increase in the post-COVID world. Empirical literature on this subject has explored various angles, but one unanswered question is whether the high leverage used in private equity (PE) buyout transactions contributes to the disproportionately high default rates among buyout targets. In the paper “Private Equity and the Resolution of Financial Distress,” Edith S. Hotchkiss, Per Strömberg and David C. Smith investigate how PE ownership correlates with the probability of default and resolution of financial distress, a relationship that is, theoretically speaking, unclear. One can argue that actions that boost the short-term returns to PE owners, increasing leverage to pay large dividends as an example, could drain liquidity and put PE-owned firms at higher default risk. But there is an opposite argument to be made as well: PE sponsors could help avoid defaults or resolve financial distress, thus preserving firm value, because of their expertise and skill. The authors find a series of interesting results that will help the literature understand better this relationship. First, they find that PE-backed firms have higher leverage and default at higher rates than other companies borrowing in leverage loan markets. This said, conditional on contemporaneous leverage, default rates are not significantly higher for PE-owned firms. These results suggest that it is leverage, rather than PE-backing specifically, that could be the key driver of default probabilities. Second, among leveraged borrowers that experience a default, PE-backed firms restructure more quickly and are less likely to be liquidated. Third, PE owners are more likely to retain control post-restructuring than other pre-default owners, often by infusing capital as firms approach distress. Overall these results suggest a very nuanced view of PE investors and their potential impact on subsequent target firms’ default: while PE investors contribute to more defaults due to the high leverage they put on companies’ balance sheets, such cost is reduced by the PE investors’ intrinsic abilities and skills in dealing with and managing financial distress.

Spotlight by Andrew Ellul
Photos courtesy of Edith S. Hotchkiss, David C. Smith, and Per Strömberg
First published October 5, 2021

The post Paper Spotlight: Private Equity and the Resolution of Financial Distress first appeared on Society for Financial Studies.