Capital Account Liberalization and Firm Innovation: Worldwide Evidence
研究利用41个国家20年的企业面板数据，发现资本账户开放与企业专利活动正相关，尤其在创新密集型行业、法律环境好的经济体以及高生产率企业中效果更强。
This study investigates whether capital account liberalization, a leading characteristic of globalization, is associated with firms’ future innovation output. Employing a novel firm-level panel data set covering 41 countries over two decades, we show that capital account liberalization is significantly associated with higher corporate patenting activities, particularly for firms from innovation-intensive industries. Further analyses show that the effect is stronger among firms from economies in a better legal environment, signifying the important role of good institutional quality in facilitating the positive impact of liberalization. The effect is also stronger among firms with higher initial productivity, consistent with the “productivity” hypothesis, according to which bigger and more productive firms generate more innovation after liberalization. Our findings are robust to the use of various measurements, subsamples, and estimation models. This study provides global firm-level evidence of the real economic impact of financial globalization.