R&D, Liquidity Constraints, and Corporate Governance

The paper discusses the link between financing R&D and tangible investment, firm size, and corporate governance. Mechanisms of corporate governance, such as the presence of large shareholders or stakeholders, may reduce agency and specificity problems and improve access to external finance. High ownership concentration, cross-shareholdings of industrial firms, and banks as blockholders are main features of the German system of corporate governance. This network-orientation is often seen as alleviating agency problems and providing sufficient finance for risky long-term investment such as R&D. However, no empirical evidence has been presented yet supporting this claim. Therefore, we base our empirical analysis on a panel data set of 106 large and medium-sized German companies, which reported R&D investment throughout the period 1987 to 1993. We find evidence that R&D and tangible investment of owner-controlled firms is constrained by the availability of internal and external funds. No such liquidity constraints are found for manager-controlled firms. Further, for these firms we observe a significant negative impact of firm size and market concentration on R&D investment, rejecting the Neo-Schumpeter hypotheses.