Recent work documents a behavioral tendency of investors to expect excessively high upside potential for low-priced stocks. These expectations expose low-priced firms to greater pressure for short-term performance because their poor earnings news leads to greater investor disappointment and larger stock price declines. Therefore, we hypothesize that firms with a long-term focus, such as those that invest heavily in research and development (R&D), avoid low share prices. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that firms with higher R&D capital decide on a higher filing price in their initial public offering, are less likely to undergo a stock split once listed, and upon a stock split, choose a higher post-split price. We establish a causal link between firms' R&D and share price management by exploiting the exogenous increases in R&D expenditures induced by the staggered introduction of state-level R&D tax credits in the US. Our study suggests that firms with large R&D capital target high share prices to shield their long-term investments from investor short-termism.

最近的研究记录了投资者的行为倾向，即对低价股票预期过高的上涨潜力。这些预期使低价公司的短期业绩面临更大的压力，因为它们糟糕的盈利消息会导致投资者更大的失望和股价更大的跌幅。因此，我们假设那些着眼长远的公司，例如那些在研发（R＆D）方面投入巨资的公司，会避免股价下跌。与我们的假设一致，我们发现研发资本较高的公司在首次公开募股时决定较高的申请价格，上市后不太可能进行股票分割，并且在股票分割时选择较高的分割后价格。我们利用美国分阶段引入州级研发税收抵免所引起的研发支出的外生增长，在企业研发与股价管理之间建立了因果关系。我们的研究表明，拥有大量研发资本的公司以高股价为目标，以保护其长期投资免受投资者短期主义的影响。