This paper analyzes the importance of equity finance for the Ramp;D activity of small and medium-sized enterprises. We use information on almost 6000 German SMEs from a company survey. Using the intensity of banking competition at the district level as instrument to control for endogeneity, we...

In the presence of asymmetric information, economic agents need to communicate their quality to investors and other parties. While much of the literature focuses exclusively on signaling, we develop a conceptual framework that extends this view with elements of the literature on certification....