Evaluating the Impact on Pharmacy Practices of a Law Requiring the Posting of Drug Prices

Posting price lists of most frequently purchased retail drugs under Section 4333 of the California Pharmaceutical Law offers consumers the opportunity to make more effective price comparisons. The same information also permits examination of the pricing structure of an entire local market, and it was just such an examination which was undertaken in the present study for 100 items on sale at 24 pharmacies in the northern region of the San Francisco Bay area. Wide price differentials were found to exist. Pharmacies charging higher prices were found to do so across their entire product line: the higher prices were not related to better service but primarily to monopolistic practices. It was also concluded that if posting has so far failed to bring about lower prices, it may be due to token compliance. The study examined computer simulation techniques for measuring the effectiveness of small, unsophisticated pharmaceutical price surveys, and the accuracy of such surveys was shown to be extremely high.     

Does Sensationalism Affect Executive Compensation? Evidence from Pay Ratio Disclosure Reform

Beginning in 2018, U.S. public firms were required to report the ratio of the chief executive officer's (CEO) compensation to their median employee's compensation in the annual proxy statement. Exploiting the staggered reporting of pay ratios, we find little evidence that total CEO compensation changes in response to pay ratio disclosure reform. However, we do find that boards significantly adjust the mix of compensation awarded by reducing the sensitivity of CEO pay to equity price changes, particularly when the CEO is likely to garner media scrutiny, and by reducing reliance on stock-based and other compensation components that are most susceptible to media coverage surrounding the pay ratio disclosure. Firms ultimately disclosing higher pay ratios garner more media coverage around the filing of their proxy statement, and more negative-toned coverage in the subsequent month. Finally, we find evidence that greater pay disparity is associated with greater selling activity by retail investors and more negative say-on-pay votes following pay ratio reform, consistent with a broad set of investors responding to public scrutiny resulting from pay ratio disclosures.     

Decentralization through Tokenization

We examine decentralization of digital platforms through tokenization as an innovation to resolve the conflict between platforms and users. By delegating control to users, tokenization through utility tokens acts as a commitment device that prevents a platform from exploiting users. This commitment comes at the cost of not having an owner with an equity stake who, in conventional platforms, would subsidize participation to maximize the platform's network effect. This trade-off makes utility tokens a more appealing funding scheme than equity for platforms with weak fundamentals. The conflict reappears when nonusers, such as token investors and validators, participate on the platform.     

CLO Performance

We study the performance of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) to understand the market imperfections giving rise to these vehicles and their corresponding economic costs. CLO equity tranches earn positive abnormal returns from the risk-adjusted price differential between leveraged loans and CLO debt tranches. Debt tranches offer higher returns than similarly rated corporate bonds, making them attractive to banks and insurers that face risk-based capital requirements. Temporal variation in equity performance highlights the resilience of CLOs to market volatility due to their closed-end structure, long-term funding, and embedded options to reinvest principal proceeds.     

The 1932 Federal Reserve Open-Market Purchases as a Precedent for Quantitative Easing

The $1 billion open-market operation conducted by the Federal Reserve, at the height of the Great Depression, was a successful precedent to the recent Quantitative Easing (QE) programs. The 1932 program entailed large purchases of medium- and long-term securities over a 4-month period. An event study analysis indicates that the program dramatically lowered medium- and long-term Treasury yields. A segmented markets model is used to analyze the effects of the open-market purchases on the economy. A significant degree of financial market segmentation is estimated, and partly explains the observed upturn in output growth. Had the Federal Reserve continued its operations and used the announcement strategy used in QE1, the Great Contraction could have been attenuated earlier. Our historical analysis suggests that the Federal Reserve in 2008 had a good predecessor to its actions.     

Discount-Rate Risk in Private Equity: Evidence from Secondary Market Transactions

Measures of private equity (PE) performance based on cash flows do not account for a discount-rate risk premium that is a component of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) alpha. We create secondary market PE indices and find that PE discount rates vary considerably. Net asset values are too smooth because they fail to reflect variation in discount rates. Although the CAPM alpha for our index is zero, the generalized public market equivalent based on cash flows is large and positive. We obtain similar results for a set of synthetic funds that invest in small cap stocks. Ignoring variation in PE discount rates can lead to a misallocation of capital.