چگونه توسعه ی مالی ملی و بین المللی بر تحقیق و توسعه ی صنعتی تاثیر میگذارد

We examine the impacts of both domestic and international financial market development on R&D intensities in 22 manufacturing industries in 18 OECD countries for the period 1990–2003. We take account of such industry characteristics as the need for external financing and the amount of tangible assets. Multiple forms of domestic financial development are important determinants of R&D intensity but only foreign direct investment is significant among alternative measures of international financial development. We find the strongest effects for private bond-market capitalization, while FDI, private credit by banks, and stock-market capitalization have similar effects in terms of magnitude.

One of the most fundamental issues in economic development is how important the maturation and deepening of financial markets are for growth. This issue has been much debated since its reintroduction into the literature by King and Levine (1993). According to Levine (2005), a consensus has been reached that more developed domestic financial markets stimulate economic growth. Presumably this linkage stems from firms gaining better access to credit, which allows easier financing of investment projects, in turn leading to productivity growth. At a deeper level, however, it is important to study the specific channels through which access to finance enhances economic growth. In this paper we consider one particular type of investment, namely research and development (R&D), and its association with national and international financial market development. It is prominently argued in the literature that more investment in R&D stimulates technological progress, which provides the foundation for the bulk of economic growth (Griliches, 1998 and Acemoglu, 2009).

In this paper we examine the impacts of financial market development on R&D intensity in 22 manufacturing industries in 18 OECD countries for the period 1990–2003. As financing constraints for R&D may be particularly tight due to the intangible nature of R&D assets, access to external funds can be expected to play an important role in stimulating innovation and eventually output growth. We find statistically and economically strong effects for most domestic indicators of financial market development. In particular, the largest impacts arise from the development of the bond market for firms relying more on external finance. The other measures of domestic financial market development are smaller and similar to each other. For international capital flows, FDI has by far the strongest impacts on R&D, operating both through sectoral financial dependence and asset tangibility. It is remarkable that neither portfolio investments nor foreign debt seem to be related to R&D intensity at the industry level. We interpret these results as suggesting that it requires strong monitoring and managerial commitment (which is present with FDI but not with more short-term and volatile portfolio investment) to support more risky investments in research and development.