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来源类型 | Working Paper |
规范类型 | 报告 |
DOI | 10.3386/w23831 |
来源ID | Working Paper 23831 |
Optimal Financing for R&D-Intensive Firms | |
Richard T. Thakor; Andrew W. Lo | |
发表日期 | 2017-09-18 |
出版年 | 2017 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | We develop a theory of optimal financing for R&D-intensive firms that uses their unique features—large capital outlays, long gestation periods, high upside, and low probabilities of R&D success—that explains three prominent stylized facts about these firms: their relatively low use of debt, large cash balances, and underinvestment in R&D. The model relies on the interaction of the unique features of R&D-intensive firms with three key frictions: adverse selection about R&D viability, asymmetric information about the upside potential of R&D, and moral hazard from risk shifting. We establish the optimal pecking order of securities with direct market financing. Using a tradeoff between tax benefits and the costs of risk shifting for debt, we establish conditions under which the firm uses an all-equity capital structure and firms raise enough financing to carry excess cash. A firm may use a limited amount of debt if it has pledgeable assets in place. However, market financing still leaves potentially valuable R&D investments unfunded. We then use a mechanism design approach to explore the potential of intermediated financing, with a binding precommitment by firm insiders to make costly ex post payouts. A mechanism consisting of put options can be used in combination with equity to eliminate underinvestment in R&D relative to the direct market financing outcome. This optimal intermediary-assisted mechanism consists of bilateral “insurance” contracts, with investors offering firms insurance against R&D failure and firms offering investors insurance against very high R&D payoffs not being realized. |
主题 | Microeconomics ; Economics of Information ; Financial Economics ; Corporate Finance ; Development and Growth ; Innovation and R& ; D |
URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w23831 |
来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
引用统计 | |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/581504 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Richard T. Thakor,Andrew W. Lo. Optimal Financing for R&D-Intensive Firms. 2017. |
条目包含的文件 | ||||||
文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
w23831.pdf(455KB) | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 |
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