SURF Mentoring

Potential projects/topics: The impact of M&A disclosures on pharmaceutical R&D innovation. In this project, we study how the accounting treatment of in-house and acquired R&D changes incentives to engage in R&D projects. In particular, we want to understand to what extent competitors are able to learn about the progress of other companies' R&D efforts through the disclosures in financial statements.

The project will begin with collecting information on M&A transactions. We will than combine the hand-collected data with common databases used in financial and accounting research as well as pharmaceutical research data.

In this process, the student will learn how to extract financial statement data at scale as well as how to work with statistical software and databases.

Potential skills gained: The student will learn how to do analyses with statistical software R and will be introduced to natural language processing via python. In addition, the student will become familiar with commonly used databases in finance and accounting.

Required qualifications or skills: BUSI 305 (helpful but not required)

Direct mentor: Faculty/P.I.