High-tech firms are built much more on the intellectual capital of key personnel than on physical assets, and firms built around the best scientists are most likely to be successful in commercializing breakthrough technologies. As a result, such firms are expected to have higher market values than similar firms less well endowed. In this paper we develop and implement an option-pricing based technique for valuing these and similar intangible assets by examining the effect of ties to star scientists on the market value of new biotech firms. Since firms with more star ties are likely to have a greater probability per unit time of making a commercially valurable R&D breakthrough, we argue and confirm empirically that both the value of the firm and the likelihood of jumps in the value are increasing in the number of star ties. These effects can be financially as well as statistically significant: for two firms with mean values for other variables, the predicted increase in market value of a firm with one article written by a star as or with a firm employee is 7.3% or 16 million 1984 dollars compared to a firm with no articles.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7201.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7201
Note: PR Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)