Does internal finance matter for R&D? New evidence from a panel of Italian firms
研究了意大利制造业企业融资与研发的关系，发现企业几乎不用债务融资研发，内部现金流对资本投资很重要，尤其是对小企业，而大型创新企业更容易获得外部融资。
This paper investigates the relationship between finance and R&D for a panel of more than 1000 Italian manufacturing firms. While Italian firms obtain a significant share of their financing from debt, the results from a unique survey show that firms use virtually no debt to finance R&D. Because Italian firms typically do not receive external equity, the obvious source of innovation financing is internal cash flow. The sensitivity of capital investment to cash flow for small and medium-large firms is estimated, testing for the presence of informational frictions in the credit market for companies performing R&D activities. A GMM method that controls for unobserved firm-specific effects and endogenous explanatory variables is used. Cash flow plays an important role in explaining capital investment, especially for small firms. Interestingly, when the measure of firms' innovative activities is considered, significant differences are found between the sub-samples of small and medium-large firms. While small innovative firms are subject to relevant financing constraints, larger companies investing in R&D have easier access to external financing. Copyright The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.