Managed Care Provider Volume

There is considerable evidence that patients that are treated by high volume physicians and hospitals have better health outcomes than patients treated by low volume physicians and hospitals. Thus, as an indirect measure of quality differences between managed care and traditional fee-for-service insurance, we compare the average provider volume of cancer patients covered by these two types of plans. We find that managed care patients tend to be treated by lower volume providers and that the magnitude of the differences varies by the particular cancer and managed care plan.

Organizational Scope and Investment: Evidence from the Drug Development Strategies and Performance of Biopharmaceutical Firms

This paper compares the clinical trial strategies and performance of large, established ("mature") biopharmaceutical firms to those of smaller ("early stage") firms that have not yet successfully developed a drug. We study a sample of 235 cancer drug candidates that entered clinical trials during the period 1990-2002 and were sponsored by public firms. Early stage firms are more likely than mature firms to advance drug candidates from Phase I to Phase II clinical trials. However, early stage firms have much less promising clinical results in their Phase II trials and their Phase II drug candidates are also less likely to advance to Phase III and to receive Food and Drug Administration approval. This pattern is more pronounced for early stage firms with large cash reserves. The evidence points to an agency problem between shareholders and managers of single-product early stage firms who are reluctant to abandon development of their only viable drug candidates. By contrast, the managers of mature firms with multiple products in development are more willing to drop unpromising drug candidates. The findings appear to be consistent with the benefits of internal capital markets identified by Stein (1997).

Entrepreneurship in Equilibrium

This paper compares the financing of new ventures in start-ups (entrepreneurship) and in established firms (intrapreneurship). Intrapreneurship allows established firms to use information on failed intrapreneurs to redeploy them into other jobs. By contrast, failed entrepreneurs must seek other jobs in an imperfectly informed external labor market. While this external labor market leads to ex post inefficient allocations, it provides entrepreneurs with high-powered incentives ex ante. We show that two types of equilibria can arise (and sometimes coexist). In a low entrepreneurship equilibrium, the market for failed entrepreneurs is thin, making internal labor markets and intrapreneurship particularly valuable. In a high entrepreneurship equilibrium, the active labor market reduces the value of internal labor markets and encourages entrepreneurship. We also show that there can be too little or too much entrepreneurial activity. There can be too little because entrepreneurs do not take into account their positive effect on the quality of the labor market. There can be too much because a high quality labor market is bad for entrepreneurial incentives.

Entrepreneurial Spawning: Public Corporations and the Genesis of New Ventures, 1986-1999

This paper examines the factors that lead to the creation of venture capital backed start-ups, a process we term entrepreneurial spawning.' We contrast two alternative views of the spawning process. In one view, employees of established firms are trained and conditioned to be entrepreneurs by being exposed to the entrepreneurial process and by working in a network of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Alternatively, individuals become entrepreneurs because the large bureaucratic companies for which they work are reluctant to fund their entrepreneurial ideas. Controlling for a firm's size, patent portfolio and industry, we find that the most prolific spawning firms were public companies located in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts that were themselves once venture capital backed. Less diversified firms are also more likely to spawn new firms. Spawning levels for these firms rise as their sales growth declines. Firms based in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts and originally backed by venture capitalists are more likely to spawn firms only peripherally related to their core businesses. Overall, these findings appear to be more consistent with the view that entrepreneurial learning and networks are important factors in the creation of venture capital backed firms.

Bank Monitoring and Investment: Evidence from the Changing Structure of Japanese Corporate Banking Relationships

During this decade the structure of corporate finance in Japan has changed dramatically. Japanese firms that once used bank debt as their prime source of financing now rely more heavily on the public capital markets. This trend was facilitated by the substantial deregulation of the Japanese capital markets. In an earlier paper (Moshi, Kashyap, and Scharfstein 1988). we demonstrated that investment by firms with close bank relationships appears to be less liquidity constrained than investment by firms without close bank ties. We interpreted this finding as evidence that bank ties tend to mitigate information problems in the capital market. This paper tracks the investment behavior of firms that have recently weakened their bank ties in favor of greater reliance on the bond market. The results suggest that these firms are now more liquidity constrained. The paper concludes with a discussion of why firms would loosen their bank ties in light of these liquidity costs.

Venture Capital Investment Cycles: The Impact of Public Markets

It is well documented that the venture capital industry is highly volatile and that much of this volatility is associated with shifting valuations and activity in public equity markets. This paper examines how changes in public market signals affected venture capital investing between 1975 and 1998. We find that venture capitalists with the most industry experience increase their investments the most when public market signals become more favorable. Their reaction to an increase is greater than the reaction of venture capital organizations with relatively little industry experience and those with considerable experience but in other industries. The increase in investment rates does not affect the success of these transactions adversely to a significant extent. These findings are consistent with the view that venture capitalists rationally respond to attractive investment opportunities signaled by public market shifts.

Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs

This paper argues that a large component of success in entrepreneurship and venture capital can be attributed to skill. We show that entrepreneurs with a track record of success are more likely to succeed than first time entrepreneurs and those who have previously failed. Funding by more experienced venture capital firms enhances the chance of success, but only for entrepreneurs without a successful track record. Similarly, more experienced venture capitalists are able to identify and invest in first time entrepreneurs who are more likely to become serial entrepreneurs. Investments by venture capitalists in successful serial entrepreneurs generate higher returns for their venture capital investors. This finding provides further support for the role of skill in both entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Herd on the Street: Informational Inefficiencies in a Market with Short-Term Speculation

Standard models of informed speculation suggest that traders try to learn information that others do not have. This result implicitly relies on the assumption that speculators have long horizons, i.e, can hold the asset forever. By contrast, we show that if speculators have short horizons, they may herd on the same information, trying to learn what other informed traders also know. There can be multiple herding equilibria, and herding speculators may even choose to study information that is completely unrelated to fundamentals. These equilibria are informationally inefficient.