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Background: The number of lung cancer resections performed annually in the United States has not been previously assessed. The objective of this study is to estimate the total number of lung cancer resections performed every year in the U.S. Methods: The number of lung cancer resections performed in the United States in 2016 and 2017 was estimated by using indirect multiplier methods based on the number of lung cancer resections in the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) and the proportion of lung cancer cases captured by the NCDB using the United States Cancer Statistics Data Set as reference. Results: In 2016, 37,128 lung cancer resections were documented in the NCDB and the NCDB captured 65.2% of incident lung cancer cases in the U.S. In 2017, 36,882 lung cancer resections were documented in the NCDB and the NCDB captured 65.1% of incident lung cancer cases in the U.S. Based on these metrics, an estimated 57,000 lung cancer resections were performed in 2016 and an estimated 56,600 lung cancer resections were performed in 2017 in the U.S. Of these lung cancer resections, an estimated 10,300 (18.2%) wedge resections, 2,800 (4.9%) segmentectomies, 40,000 (70.6%) lobectomies, 80 (0.14%) bronchial sleeve resections, 1,400 (2.5%) extended lobectomies, 1,600 (2.8%) pneumonectomies, and 40 (0.07%) extended pneumonectomies were performed in 2017. Conclusion: Based on this national analysis, an approximately 56,000 to 57,000 lung cancer resections are performed in the U.S. annually. Lobectomies are the most common lung cancer operations performed in the U.S. Funding Information: None. Declaration of Interests: None. Ethics Approval Statement: Approval dated 2/2/21, Massachusetts General Hospital IRB, Institutional Review Board Number: 2020P004110.

Background: Accurate and sensitive detection of antibody to SARS-CoV-2 remains an essential component of the pandemic response. Measuring antibody that predicts neutralising activity and the vaccine response is an absolute requirement for laboratory-based confirmatory and reference activity. Methods: The viral receptor binding domain (RBD) constitutes the prime target antigen for neutralising antibody. A double antigen binding assay (DABA) provides the most sensitive format. It has been exploited in a novel hybrid manner employing an S1 solid-phase preferentially presenting RBD once solid-phase bound, coupled with a labelled RBD conjugate, used in a two-step sequential assay. Findings: This assay showed a specificity of 100% on 825 pre COVID-19 samples and a potential sensitivity of 99.6% on 276 recovery samples, predicting quantitatively the presence of neutralising antibody determined by pseudo-type neutralisation and by plaque reduction. Anti-RBD is also measurable in ferrets immunised with ChadOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. The early response at presentation with illness, elevated responsiveness with disease severity, detection of asymptomatic seroconversion and persistence after the loss of antibody to the nucleoprotein (anti-NP) are all documented. Trial Registration: The ISARIC WHO CCP-UK study was registered at https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN66726260 and designated an Urgent Public Health Research Study by NIHR. Interpretation: The hybrid DABA displays the attributes necessary for an antibody test to be used in both clinical and reference serology. It allows the neutralising antibody response to be inferred early in infection and potentially in vaccine recipients. It is also of sufficient sensitivity to be used to provide serological confirmation of prior infection and provides a more secure measure for seroprevalence studies in the population generally than does anti-NP based on the Architect platform. Funding: This work is variously supported by grants from: the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR; award CO-CIN-01), the Medical Research Council (MRC; grant MC_PC_19059 and MC_PC_19078), MRC NIHR (grant CV220-111) and by the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at University of Liverpool in partnership with Public Health England (PHE), in collaboration with Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Oxford (award 200907), NIHR HPRU in Respiratory Infections at Imperial College London with PHE (award 200927), Wellcome Trust and Department for International Development (DID; 215091/Z/18/Z), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1209135), Liverpool Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (grant reference C18616/A25153), NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Imperial College London (IS-BRC-1215-20013), EU Platform for European Preparedness Against (Re-)emerging Epidemics (PREPARE; FP7 project 602525), and NIHR Clinical Research Network for providing infrastructure support for this research. Declaration of Interests: RST, MOM and PC report patent pending (Patent Application No. 2011047.4 for “SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection assay). All other authors declare no competing interests. Ethics Approval Statement: The use of tissues was approved by the CDRTB Steering Committee in accordance with the responsibility delegated by the National Research Ethics Service (South Central Ethics Committee – C, NRES reference 15/SC/0089). Written informed consent was obtained from all patients. Ethical approval was given by the South Central–Oxford C Research Ethics Committee in England (reference: 13/SC/0149), Scotland A Research Ethics Committee (reference: 20/SS/0028) and World Health Organization Ethics Review Committee (RPC571 and RPC572l; 25 April 2013)

Biomedical innovation in oncology has become riskier and more expensive, precipitating a withdrawal of private sector funding from the sector. In this article, we consider a portfolio-based approach to funding in which multiple distinct ovarian cancer treatment candidates are funded within a single structure. Twenty-five potential early-stage drug development projects were identified for inclusion in a hypothetical portfolio through interviews with gynecological oncologists and leading experts, a review of ovarian cancer-related trials registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov database, and an extensive literature review. The annualized returns of this portfolio were simulated under a purely private sector structure both with and without partial funding from philanthropic grants, and a public-private partnership that included government guarantees. We find that public-private structures of this type can increase expected returns and reduce tail risk, allowing greater amounts of private sector capital to fund early-stage research and development.

DeAngelo and Roll (2015) observe that leverage cross-sections change significantly over even short periods. This finding is largely incompatible with existing models operating on the assumption that firms choose leverage levels in isolation. In this paper we ask how executive networks might affect the decision making process. Using a sample of large US firms, we apply the stochastic actor-based dynamic social network methodology to show that firms sharing directors in common tend to become more similar in capital structure. Network influence effects are economically significant even on top of traditionally employed capital structure determinant variables, and also robust to director selection effects.

Using the staggered implementation of the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) as a natural experiment, we show that bonds issued in a transparent environment receive higher prices (or equivalently pay lower yield spreads to benchmark US treasury bonds) relative to control bonds issued in the opaque, pre-TRACE environment. The yield spread on a typical pre-TRACE issuance of 132bps falls by 12bps following implementation of TRACE. We do not detect a significant effect on underpricing or fees and expenses paid in the issuing process. The main driver of the reduction in the cost of capital for bond issuers is the mitigation of information asymmetry rather than improved liquidity in the secondary market.

Prior literature identifies great similarity in executive compensation packages of firms and has succeeded in hypothesizing but not in substantiating the responsible channel or channels. We introduce dynamic stochastic network techniques to directly analyze the following three possible channels simultaneously for the first time: sharing directors, sharing compensation consultants, and sharing industry membership. Using the dynamic technology, we show that package similarity is achieved by sharing directors and industry membership rather than by sharing compensation consultants. Moreover, boards with fewer females are more likely to include higher proportions of options compensation, and higher fixed compensation deters tie formation.

We estimate an option-based value of a fund manager’s conditional market timing skill in bear market states. We combine this value with alpha based estimates of selection skill to give an overall valuation of active management. At the aggregate level, we estimate that the benefit arising from the option value of active fund management in bad times can be large enough to cover its unconditional overall cost. Our analysis suggests that by taking account of the option premium delivered by managers’ bear market timing skills, the longstanding mutual fund underperformance puzzle could be largely rationalized.

Recently a new type of institution has emerged, crowd funders. These entities: 1) channel capital to create intellectual property; 2) gather information on project and entrepreneur quality; and 3) gauge demand information directly from individuals to improve the efficiency of capital allocation. Data from crowd funder Kickstarter allows new insights on capital formation and the role of entrepreneurial reputation formation in the venture funding process. This funding method includes all cases where entrepreneurs try yet fail to raise funds, a feature heretofore unavailable to researchers. We find that both positive and negative reputation acquisition significantly change measures of capital raising success.

We contribute to the growing debate on associating macroeconomic risk with stock price momentum. Not only is momentum seasonal, so is its net factor exposure. We show that winners and losers only differ in macroeconomic factor loadings during January, the one month when losers overwhelmingly outperform winners. In the remainder of the year, the months in which momentum actually does exist, winner and loser factor loadings offset nearly completely. Furthermore, the magnitude of macroeconomic risk premia appears to seasonally vary contra momentum.

In the G7 sample of seven developed countries across three continents, the short-horizon informativeness of aggregate return predictors such as the dividend yield and the short rate is nonexistent during business cycle expansions but sizable during business cycle contractions. We decompose the conditional R2 to show that shifts in volatility are not responsible for the stark differences. Corroborative tests confirm that the disparity in predictability is not driven by prediction of negative expected returns in bad times.

The valuation of a distressed firm can be a complex task in which debtors and creditors determine asset values according to their diverging interests. We explore the valuation of distressed firms in a laboratory where managers are removed from the bargaining table and bondholders are the sole claimants. We find several economic forces to be at work. Macroeconomic conditions have strong explanatory power for the cross-section of bondholder recovery, over and above industry conditions. In addition, the performance of non-distressed firms is related to recovery. Our laboratory is the bankruptcy regime of liquidation and rehabilitation, the predecessor of corporate reorganization. Even without managers' input, however, complexity does not appear to be severely reduced. Our findings are consistent with the notion that bondholders try to conserve asset value through rehabilitation, that default proceedings are lengthy and costly, and that claimants face a trade-off between recovery and time spent in default.

We examine a novel data set of quarterly holdings for 250 hedge fund advisors over the 1999-2005 period. Stock holdings have some predictive power; in the month following a reported holding, the average annualized risk-adjusted return is 1.0%. The predictive power of option holdings is more pronounced. After excluding non-directional (zero delta) strategies such as straddles and portfolio insurance, stocks underlying holdings of calls and puts exhibit annualized risk-adjusted returns of 6.7% and -11.3%, respectively. We find the greatest return predictability for holdings of deep out-of-the-money options and holdings of puts having high liquidity relative to the underlying stock. Overall, these findings support the predictions of Black (1975) and Easley, O'Hara, and Srinivas (1998) about informed traders' choice to hold options versus stocks, and suggest that options markets are an important venue for informed traders.

We examine how incentives embedded in managerial compensation contracts are priced by the bond and stock markets. Specifically, the incentives we consider are the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock price (delta) and the sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock-return volatility (vega). Controlling for other determinants, we find that higher levels of both vega and delta are associated with higher bond credit spreads and higher expected stock returns. In addition to having a direct effect on credit spreads and expected stock returns, higher incentives are also associated with lower average cash flows, higher volatility of cash flows, and higher volatility of stock returns (all of which increase credit spreads), and higher systematic risk (which increases expected stock return). Thus, higher incentives have a cascading effect on credit spreads and expected stock returns. Also, a portfolio of high-incentive firms significantly underperforms a portfolio of low-incentive firms on a risk-adjusted basis; thus, on average shareholders appear to be harmed ex post as a result of incentive provision.

We examine whether momentum profits globally can be explained by macroeconomic risk and address in part whether momentum returns are consistent with risk-based explanations. Profits to momentum strategies only weakly co-move among 40 countries, whether within regions or across continents. Internationally, momentum profits bear basically no statistically or economically significant relation to the Chen, Roll, and Ross (1986) macroeconomic factors. Performance of a forecasting model based on lagged instrumental variables also indicates that there is no measurable relation between macroeconomic risk and momentum either abroad or in the U.S. Globally, momentum profits are large and statistically reliable in periods of both negative and positive economic growth; these momentum profits reverse over one- to five-year horizons, an action inconsistent with current risk-based explanations.

Using straight industrial bonds with quoted prices, we investigate the determinants of credit spread changes. We find the variables that should in theory determine credit spread changes in fact have limited explanatory power. Further, the residuals from this first-pass regression are highly cross-correlated, and principal components analysis strongly suggests they are driven by a single common factor. We investigate several macro-economic and financial variables as candidate proxies for this factor. We cannot, however, find any set of variables which explain this common systematic factor. Our results suggest the corporate bond market is a segmented market driven by corporate bond specific supply/demand shocks.

Buying recent winners and shorting recent losers guarantees time varying factor exposures in accordance with the performance of common risk factors during the ranking period. Adjusted for this dynamic risk exposure, momentum profits are remarkably stable across subperiods of the entire post 1926 era. Factor models can explain ninety-five percent of winner or loser return variability, but cannot explain their mean returns. Momentum strategies which base winner or loser status on stock-specific return components are more profitable than those based on total returns. Neither industry effects nor cross-sectional differences in expected returns are the primary cause of the momentum phenomenon.