In this paper, we investigate the issue of financial constraints to innovation in SMEs in Italy with respect to the future changes in the banking system, which will be driven by the adoption of the new version of the Basel Capital Accord, scheduled to be implemented after 2006. The study is...

It is widely acknowledged that firms performing Ramp;D investments are very likely to undergo financial constraints (FC) due to their specific characteristics, which make external debt an imperfect substitute for internal finance, especially for small sized enterprises. This situation calls into...

This paper investigates the relationship between finance and Ramp;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 Ramp;D....