The Impact of Changes in Corporate Capital Structure and Liquidity on Research and Development

该研究项目的目的是调查美国制造业的财务和所有权结构如何影响对长期投资目标的追求，特别是新产品和工艺的开发。 进行了三项不同的实证研究。首先，提出了投资与财务政策同时选择的模型，该模型可用于研究流动性约束对企业层面研发投资（或普通投资）的影响。其次，将开展额外的工作，使用离散选择退出模型来研究合并、杠杆收购或其他“私有化”交易的收益来源，该模型还纳入了按其价格衡量的交易价值。第三，同一模型用于构建收购概率的预测，可以作为识别潜在被低估公司的屏幕。 对这些公司（对于那些随后未被收购的公司）股权回报的检查可以部分检验市场短视或长期投资低估的假设。 该项目的一个重要部分涉及更新在之前的 NSF 拨款期间构建的数据集，其中包括 1959 年至 1987 年约 2700 家制造企业的资产负债表和损益表以及退出信息。该数据集已被经济学专业的研究人员广泛使用。

The aim of the research project is to investigate the way in which financial and ownership structure of the manufacturing sector in the United States affects the pursuit of long term investment goals, in particular, the development of new products and processes. Three different empirical studies are conducted. First, a model of simultaneous choice of investment and financial policy is outlined, which can be used to investigate the effect of liquidity constraints on research and development investment (or ordinary investment) at the firm level. Second, additional work will be undertaken that looks into the sources of gain from merger, leveraged buyout or other "going private" transactions using a discrete choice model of exit which also incorporates the value of the transaction as measured by its price. Third, the same model is used to construct predictions of takeover probability which can serve as a screen to identify potentially undervalued firms. Examination of the returns to the equities of such firms (for those which are not subsequently acquired) provides a partial test of the hypothesis of market myopia or undervaluation of long-term investment. An important part of the project involves updating a dataset constructed during a previous NSF grant which consists of balance sheets and income statements as well as exit information for approximately 2700 manufacturing firms from 1959 through 1987. This dataset has been widely used by researchers in the economics profession.