We analyze the financial performance of a hypothetical portfolio of 120 mRNA vaccine candidates in the preclinical stage targeting 11 emerging infectious diseases. We calibrate the simulation parameters with input from domain experts in mRNA technology and an extensive literature review. We find...

We propose a unified theory of asset price determination encompassing both "conventional" and "alternative" asset classes (private equity, real estate, etc.). The model features disruption of old by young firms and skewness in the distribution of innovative rents among the young innovators. The...

In recent years, impact investors - private investors who seek to generate simultaneously financial and social returns - have attracted intense interest and controversy. We analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact and traditional investors to assess how the non-financial characteristics...

General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we...

We review the literature on financial intermediation in the process by which new medical therapeutics are financed, developed, and delivered. We discuss the contributing factors that lead to a key finding in the literature--underinvestment in biomedical R&D--and focus on the role that banks and...

From 2010 to 2021, 639 US VC-funded firms achieved unicorn status. We investigate why there are so many unicorns and why controlling shareholders give investors privileges to obtain unicorn status. We show that unicorns rely more than other VC-funded firms on organizational capital as well as...

Public attention to a firm may provide valuable monitoring, but it may also have a dark side by constraining management's decisions and distracting it. We use inclusion in the S&P 500 index as a positive shock to public attention. Media coverage, Google searches, SEC downloads, SEC comment...

Despite its large and increasing size in the U.S. and Europe, there is relatively little research on the private debt (PD) market, particularly compared to the bank and syndicated loan markets. Accordingly, in this paper, we survey U.S. and European investors with private debt assets under...

Despite the incentives of incumbent domestic listed corporations (DLCs) in the electricity generation industry, private equity, institutional investors, and foreign corporations have played an outsized role in financing the energy transition. These new entrants are twice as likely to create...