Market Valuation of Successful versus Non‐successful R&D Efforts in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract:   This paper examines the relationship between a non‐financial measure of successful research and development (R&D) efforts in the pharmaceutical industry and R&D expenditures. I hypothesize that the R&D of successful producers will be valued more by the market than the R&D of non‐successful producers. The regression results support the hypothesis. In the primary model, R&D is not associated with price; however, the coefficient on the interaction between R&D and successful developers is positively related to stock price. This implies that the market values the R&D expenditures of successful developers but not the expenditures of less‐successful developers.     

Consumer preferences and product and process R&D

Firms often conduct both product and process R&D. Consumer preferences typically play a vital role in determining these R&D choices. The economics literature, however, has mostly ignored the interrelationship between the R&D choices of firms and consumer preferences. Istudy product and process R&D from the perspective of their relationship with consumer preferences. In doing so, I find a novel distinction between the two kinds of R&D. This distinction can explain several empirical observations regarding firms' choices of the two, and can also potentially enable us to better empirically identify the two.     

R&D and performance persistence: Evidence from the United Kingdom

There is compelling evidence from both the United States and United Kingdom suggesting that R&D investment is positively related to operating and/or market performance. This study extends prior research on R&D and valuation by further examining the sustainability or persistence of operating growth and market performance as a result of R&D investments.We use a large dataset of U.K. companies during the period 1990–2003 and our findings confirm the relation between R&D intensity and consistent growth in Sales and Gross Income, but only in the cases when a firm needs to engage in R&D activity because of the industry in which it operates. Moreover, our evidence indicates not only a positive relation between R&D intensity and subsequent risk-adjusted excess returns among firms that engage in R&D as testified by prior literature, but we also show that R&D intensity improves persistence in excess stock returns: the highest R&D-intensity firms are found to earn higher risk-adjusted excess returns more consistently than the sample median return, compared to lower R&D-intensity firms, as well as firms with no R&D. We interpret this finding as consistent with at least some form of market mispricing.     

R&D Progress, stock price volatility, and post-announcement drift: An empirical investigation into biotech firms

I investigate the effects of R&D progress on the dynamics of stock price volatility and the post announcement drift to provide insights into whether or not and how capital markets react to corporate R&D progress in the context of the biotech industry. I find both stock price volatility and the post announcement drift decrease in R&D progress. More importantly, the decrease is proportional to the increase in the drug development success rate driven by R&D progress. Findings suggest that R&D progress conveys useful risk-relevant information, and plays an important role in explaining stock price volatility change and market anomalies.     

The effect of management incentives and cross-listing status on the accounting treatment of R&D spending

This paper investigates the effect of management incentives and cross-listing status on the accounting treatment of research and development (R&D) spending for a sample of Canadian hi-tech and biopharmaceutical firms. U.S. GAAP adopts an immediate expensing rule for all R&D spending except for software development costs for which technological feasibility has been established. Contrary to the U.S., Canadian and international standard setters recommend capitalization if development costs meet certain criteria. Because those criteria are largely based on management judgment, capitalization of R&D spending is an accounting choice that can be used for income manipulation or signaling.Using a logit model, we examine how the decision to capitalize R&D spending is influenced by the cross-listing status and several other key firm characteristics that are well documented in the accounting literature. We find that the probability of capitalizing R&D spending increases for cross-listed and non-cross-listed firms in the software industry. The probability of capitalizing R&D spending also increases for firms that are more leveraged, more mature, and have higher level of cash flows from operations. However, the probability of capitalizing R&D spending decreases for larger corporations, firms with more concentrated ownership and highly profitable firms. Overall our results indicate a preference for Canadian firms in the software industry to emulate U.S. accounting practices for R&D spending. They also suggest that firms use the decision to capitalize or expense R&D spending as an earning management tool to either meet debt covenants or to smooth income.     

Will the real R&D employees please stand up? Effects of tax breaks on firm-level outcomes

This paper evaluates the effect of tax incentives for research and development (R&D) on R&D spending and employment of R&D staff in a quasi-experimental setting. To do this, I exploit an exogenous reform in UK R&D tax policy, which changed the definition of an SME from firms with fewer than 250 employees to those with fewer than 500 employees. I use the UK Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey (BERD), for which companies do not have an incentive to relabel their ordinary employees or spending as R&D. I find that R&D tax incentives help to increase R&D spending at the company level; this translates to a user cost elasticity between ?0.88 and ?1.18. Further, the additional R&D generated through the tax relief can be attributed entirely to an increase in the number of R&D employees in the companies’ workforce. Together, these results challenge a common narrative on the role of R&D tax incentives.     

Store characteristics in retail oligopoly

I use a consumer choice model for the British supermarket industry to compare the incentives of firms, selecting store characteristics, with the interests of consumers. I perform a series of counterfactual changes to store size and location and rank the alternatives by gains per unit of fixed cost. Jointly, firms gain most from large stores, which increase total consumer expenditure. Individually, however, firm incentives are strongly influenced by business‐stealing effects, resulting in a close agreement with consumers, who value middle‐sized stores and distance‐reducing relocations. These individual firm incentives provide little consumer‐protection justification for recent size and location regulations.     

Environmental R&D and the uncertainty of future earnings

This paper examines whether the variability in the future earnings stream generated by the investment in environmentally-related R&D projects is different than that created by the investment in other R&D projects. To carry out this investigation, I decompose total R&D expenditures into two components: those related to R&D projects aimed at reducing the firm’s costs to comply with environmental legislation (i.e., the environmental component), and those related to all other R&D projects, which are focused on increasing the firm’s revenues and/or decreasing its other operating costs (i.e., the residual component). As predicted, I find that the environmental component of R&D expenditures contributes significantly less to the variability of future earnings than the residual component.     

Conservatism, Growth and the Role of Accounting Numbers in the Fundamental Analysis Process

I evaluate the effects of conservative accounting for research and development (R&D) and past growth in R&D on: (1) the relation between aggregate earnings (deflated by price) and contemporaneous stock return, and (2) the association between estimates of value derived from the residual income valuation model (i.e., RIV estimates) and equity market value. I show that the conservative treatment of R&D affects the earnings/return relation only for firms that experience high growth in R&D during the return interval of interest. I also demonstrate that the effect of conservative accounting for R&D on the association between RIV estimates and equity market values is increasing in past growth in R&D.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Intangible investment and the importance of firm-specific factors in the determination of earnings

We examine the effect of intangible investment on earnings noncommonality, defined as the extent to which a firm’s earnings performance is determined by firm-specific factors versus market and industry factors. Such insight is important in determining the appropriate weighting of these factors when forecasting a firm’s earnings. For a sample of US firms over the 1980–2006 period, we find that earnings noncommonality is positively associated with intangible asset intensity. This finding is consistent with the resource-based view of the firm, which posits that intangible investments allow firms to differentiate themselves economically from their rivals. We also find that separable recognized intangibles contribute more to earnings noncommonality than do either goodwill or R&D, perhaps because separable recognized intangibles are more likely to arise from contractual or legal rights and thus are less susceptible to expropriation by rival firms. Finally, we find that the positive impact of R&D on earnings noncommonality is significantly greater for those industries where patents and other legal mechanisms are most effective in protecting R&D. This result suggests that the success of intangible investment as a differentiation strategy depends largely on the effectiveness of mechanisms used to protect intangible investments from expropriation.     

The valuation relevance of R&D expenditures: Time series evidence

The literature on the valuation relevance of R&D investments is based primarily on cross-sectional regressions or panel data regressions with time and firm (or industry) fixed effects such that the parameters relating R&D to market value are cross-sectionally constant. In an alternative approach, this paper investigates the value relevance of R&D investment using an earnings-based time series valuation model. Model parameters are estimated for each firm separately. In contradistinction to the results obtained from cross-sectional and fixed effects panel models, this study finds weak empirical support at best for the value relevance of R&D expenditures at the firm level.     

The size,concentration and evolution of corporate R&D spending in U.S. firms from 1976 to 2010: Evidence and implications

The use of research and development (R&D) spending as an empirical proxy for managerial discretion, information asymmetry and growth opportunities, is pervasive in empirical corporate finance research. Underlying this is the implicit assumption that firms choose levels of R&D to maximize value, given firm and industry characteristics. An alternative framework views the level of R&D spending as subject to idiosyncratic behavior as managers myopically manipulate R&D expenditures to meet short-term earnings goals. Using aggregate firm and industry level data, we find evidence consistent with the view that R&D is determined by firm and industry characteristics. Time invariant firm and industry fixed effects explain most of the cross-sectional variation in observed R&D spending, while time-varying factors like size, profitability, or market-to-book explain little of the cross-sectional variation. We find that R&D spending continues to grow faster than advertising and capital expenditures. We also find no evidence of managerial myopia as corporate aggregate R&D expenditures are growing faster than aggregate profitability and the number of firms that undertake R&D has increased over the period from 1976 to 2010.     

R&D Increases and Long‐Term Performance of Rivals

We examine how a firm's research and development (R&D) increases affect its intra‐industry competitors in the long run. Consistent with the R&D spillover hypothesis, when a firm unexpectedly increases its R&D spending, its intra‐industry competitors experience improvements in operating performance and analyst forecast revisions and earn positive abnormal stock returns in the long run. The industry concentration, which is related to the firm's strategic reaction, is crucial in determining the magnitude of the R&D spillover effect.     

Industry Cost of Equity Capital: UK Evidence

Abstract:  This paper explores the industry cost of equity capital for the UK. We replicate the Fama and French (1997) US analysis for UK industries, but additionally investigate the industry cost of equity capital obtained from a conditional CAPM, the Cahart (1997) four factor model, and the Al-Horani, Pope and Stark (2003) R&D model. In line with the Fama-French US results, the out of sample performance of all the models is disappointing Whilst the FF3F model has a somewhat higher explanatory power than the CAPM in terms of explaining past returns, the SMB and HML factor slopes show considerable variability through time. However, all our models of the cost of equity capital in the UK outperform a simple 'beta one' model, a result that has implications for the regulatory process. There is also some evidence to suggest that a conditional CAPM may be of interest to regulators. The new R&D model of Al-Horani et al. clearly has potential, in that over the limited period for which data is available it yields return errors not dissimilar to those found under the FF3F model, but exhibits slope coefficients on the fourth R&D factor that seem to be relatively stable.     

Measuring R&D curtailment among short-horizon CEOs

I review evidence produced by prior literature on CEO horizon problems and show that prior empirical findings are correlated with the research design employed. I find that evidence of R&D curtailment by CEOs as they approach retirement stems predominantly from cross-sectional correlations between CEO age or tenure and R&D spending. Using a broad sample of CEOs of S&P 1500 firms, I identify two factors that confound the cross-sectional relationship of firm R&D spending on CEO age or tenure which can lead to spurious inferences regarding the CEO horizon problem. I find that tracking R&D spending by the same CEOs over time produces no evidence of R&D curtailment. These results have research design implications for future researchers investigating the impact of shortened CEO career horizons on investment myopia.     

Accounting choice and future performance: The case of R&D accounting in France

We examine whether managers’ decisions to capitalize or expense R&D expenditures convey information about the future performance of the firm. Focusing on a French setting where managers can choose to capitalize R&D expenditures under certain circumstances, we find that, after controlling for industry effects, firms that capitalize R&D expenditures spend less on R&D, have more volatile R&D efforts, and are smaller and more leveraged than firms that expense R&D expenditures. We also find that capitalizers capitalize R&D outlays when they need to meet or beat thresholds. Finally, we show that the decision to capitalize R&D is generally associated with a negative or neutral impact on future performance, even after controlling for self-selection. Our results also show that when firms both capitalize and expense R&D expenditures, the expensed portion exhibits a stronger (and negative) relationship with future performance. Market-based tests corroborate these findings. While we cannot unambiguously establish whether our findings imply that management uses R&D capitalization to manage earnings or because it is unable to estimate the earning power of R&D projects, our results suggest that management is unable to truthfully convey information about future performance through its decision to capitalize R&D. Our findings, based on real data as opposed to simulated data, therefore contrast with previous supportive evidence in favor of capitalization in the literature.     

Reliability of R&D capitalization: Evidence from ex post impairment in China

Unlike prior studies that investigate research and development (R&D) accounting as a dichotomous choice between capitalizing vs. expensing, this study identifies low-reliability R&D capitalization by the occurrence of ex post impairment of capitalized R&D costs. I find that low-reliability capitalization is associated with higher discretionary accruals but fails to signal future innovation, whereas normal capitalization without subsequent impairment lacks earnings aggressiveness and predicts future innovation positively, compared to expensing firms. Next, this study shows that Big 4 and industry specialist auditors improve reliability by notably decreasing the likelihood of low-reliability R&D capitalization. The results remain robust after controlling for R&D investment intensity and potential endogeneity in the capitalization decision. Additional tests show that managers strategically time the recognition of impairment for big-bath and earnings-smoothing purposes, and that analyst coverage does not help differentiate between low-reliability and normal R&D capitalization. Collectively, this paper increases our understanding of R&D accounting and auditing and contributes to the debate on the reliability of R&D capitalization.     

Patent privateering,litigation, and R&D incentives

We model “patent privateering”—whereby producing firms sell patents to Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), which then license them under the threat of litigation—in a bargaining game. PAEs can negotiate higher licensing fees than producing firms because they cannot be countersued for infringement. Privateering produces two countervailing effects: it increases the offensive value of patents, whereas it decreases their defensive value and lowers the aggregate surplus of producing firms. Embedding the bargaining game into a Research and Development (R&D) contest for multiple complementary technologies, we find that privateering may increase R&D investments, even as it induces more litigation threats and reduces industry profits.     

R&D tax incentives: a reappraisal

This paper examines R&D tax incentives in oligopolistic markets. We characterize the conditions under which tax incentives reach the socially desirable level of firm-financed R&D spending. The outcome of the market depends not only on the level of technological spillover in the industry but also on the degree of strategic interaction between the firms. One major result emerges from the model: The socially desirable level of R&D investment is not necessarily reached by subsidizing R&D. When the technological spillover is sufficiently low, the government might want to tax R&D investments, and this result does not necessarily arise because firms are overinvesting in R&D. There are also cases in which an R&D tax is desirable even though firms are underinvesting in R&D compared with the first-best optimum. In practice, this theoretical finding calls for a lower sales tax combined with an R&D subsidy in oligopolistic industries with high technological spillovers, and a lower sales tax combined with an R&D tax in oligopolistic industries with low technological spillovers.     

财政补贴和税收优惠对新能源汽车产业R&D投入的影响

采用倾向得分匹配法,实证对比分析财政补贴和税收优惠对新能源汽车上市公司R&D投入的激励作用。结果表明:财政补贴能够有效促进新能源汽车产业的R&D投入,而税收优惠效果不佳。据此,可采取财政补贴为主,税收优惠为辅的财税政策,并逐渐完善财政补贴形式和补贴监管方式,从而最大限度地发挥财税政策对新能源汽车产业R&D投入的促进作用。