How Does Firms’ Innovation Disclosure Affect Their Banking Relationships?
研究美国发明人保护法案强制提前公开专利申请后，企业创新披露增加如何帮助其更换贷款银行、降低债务成本，并进入银团贷款和公开资本市场。
Firms face a trade-off between patenting, thereby disclosing innovation, and secrecy. We show that this trade-off interacts with firms’ financing choices. As a shock to innovation disclosure, we study the American Inventor’s Protection Act that made firms’ patent applications public 18 months after filing, rather than when granted. We find that such increased innovation disclosure helps firms switch lenders, resulting in lower cost of debt, and facilitates their access to syndicated-loan and public capital markets. Our evidence lends support to the idea that public-information provision through patents and private information in financial relationships are substitutes, and that innovation disclosure makes credit markets more contestable. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.