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Technological Innovation
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BJM
14,4 The effects of equity financing
and debt financing on
technological innovation
698 Evidence from developed countries
Received 8 January 2019
Revised 15 May 2019
Ling Zhang
4 August 2019 School of Management, Xi’an Polytechnic University, Xi’an, China, and
Accepted 3 September 2019
Sheng Zhang and Yingyuan Guo
School of Public Policy and Administration,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the effects of equity financing and debt financing
on technological innovation, and prove that the enhancement of a financing system’s risk tolerance
for technological innovation can enhance the innovation risk preference of enterprises and thus
promote innovation.
Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on a transnational sample of 35 developed countries
from 1996 to 2015, by using the panel econometric model to empirically examine the effects of two financing
modes on innovation.
Findings – The findings showed that equity financing, which has higher risk tolerance, has a more
positive impact on innovation than debt financing in terms of both economic uptrend and economic
downtrend, and that government efficiency plays a significant role in supporting the performance of
technological innovation.
Originality/value – The paper provides a research framework for examining how a financing system’s risk
tolerance capacity affects the development of technological innovation through promoting risk preference
among enterprises. This paper provides transnational and cross-cycle comparative evidence that equity
financing with a strong risk tolerance capacity can better support technological innovation, even in periods of
economic downtrend. Moreover, the importance of financing system’s risk tolerance capacity for innovation
during economic crises is discussed.
Keywords Innovation performance, Equity financing, Debt financing, Technological innovation,
Risk tolerance
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Innovation is an increasingly important means by which companies can contribute to
sustainable development (Mousavi and Bossink, 2017). However, technological uncertainty
means the process of innovation is high-risk in terms of technological R&D and technology
commercialization. A good financial system can help support innovation by tolerating and
taking on the risks inherent to technological trial and error and business exploration.
Whereas previous studies have shown that bank debt financing and stock market equity
financing have different risk tolerance for innovation(Caggese, 2012; Nanda and
Rhodes-Kropf, 2017), theoretical contributions have made little headway in exploring how
a financing system’s risk tolerance capacity affects innovation.
There has been a lot of academic debate about which financing system is more likely to
Baltic Journal of Management support technological innovation – bank debt financing or stock market equity financing
Vol. 14 No. 4, 2019
pp. 698-715
(Laeven et al., 2015; Rajan and Zingales, 1998). Banks’ inherent aversion to risk leads them to
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1746-5265
DOI 10.1108/BJM-01-2019-0011 This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71904152).
avoid investing in high-risk projects with a high probability of failure, which results in Equity
standard debt financing contracts provided by banks being unsuitable for innovation financing and
projects where the potential high returns come with a high failure probability. Moreover, the debt financing
bank market itself cannot effectively overcome the information asymmetry and agency
problems that exist in high-tech industries. The stock market has more advantages in terms
of risk management, management incentives and multi-information review, and it is better
able to supervise the company. In addition, the developed stock market provides a good 699
price discovery mechanism, allowing innovative enterprises to provide a better stock price
and thus encourage innovation. Therefore, increasing the proportion of market financing
may improve the efficiency of R&D funds to promote technological innovation (Brown et al.,
2009). This is particularly true of high-level technology innovations, which particularly
benefits from stock market equity financing, whereas low-tech innovation generally needs
bank credit financing support (Zhang et al., 2016).
While some previous studies support the idea that the key factor in determining which
financial system better supports innovation is the risk tolerance capacity (Beck and
Levine, 2002; Levine, 2002), it is much less clear how it does and the role of risk tolerance
thereof. The existing literature has emphasized that financial markets can affect
innovation in at least two ways – by relieving financial constraints, and by shaping the
incentives of firms to pursue novel rather than routine projects (Atanassov, 2015;
Brown et al., 2013). Only a few studies emphasize difference between the effects of bank
debt financing and stock market equity financing on technological innovation (Brown
et al., 2017; Beck and Levine, 2004; Cornaggia et al., 2015). There is remarkably little
evidence, however, about the role of risk tolerance capacity between debt financing and
equity financing. More recent studies (e.g. Khan et al., 2018; Nanda and Rhodes-Kropf,
2017) have provide some evidence that financing risk has a particularly strong impact on
innovation, but none of them examines why equity financing has a more positive impact
on innovation than debt financing.
We looked to fill that research gap by investigating whether the innovation performance
is related to the risk tolerance capacity of their external financing. We further explore the
effects of financing availability by examining what happens to innovation in times of
economy crisis. This paper uses transnational sample data collected from 35 countries or
regions from 1996 to 2015 to test the hypotheses of the study. This paper finds that equity
financing with higher risk tolerance has a more positive impact on technological innovation
than debt financing in terms of both economic uptrend and economic downtrend.
This paper makes several contributions. First, it provides a research framework for
examining how a financing system’s risk tolerance capacity affects the development of
technological innovation through promoting risk preference among enterprises. Second, it
contributes to our understanding of the influence of external equity and debt financing on
enterprises’ decision making on innovation development, proving that equity financing with
high risk tolerance can endogenously incentivize risk-averse enterprises to become risk-
preference enterprises. Third, this paper provides transnational and cross-cycle
comparative evidence that equity financing with a strong risk tolerance capacity can
better support technological innovation, even in periods of economic downtrend.
Innovation success
probability
2.2 Hypothesis
The financial system can provide financial support for innovative and adventurous
entrepreneurs (Rajan and Zingales, 1998). In addition, compared with bank credit, stock market
financing can better spread and share the risks of innovation, thus encouraging technological
innovation. Stock markets enable investors to share the high returns of technological
innovation by taking high risks through the mechanism of “risk-sharing and revenue-sharing,”
thereby attracting more funds to invest in technological innovation (Laeven et al., 2015).
For these reasons, stock markets have been said to be uniquely suited for financing
technology-led growth (Brown et al., 2017; Grant and Yeo, 2018). The equity financing model is
more tolerant of technological innovation failure, thus incentivizing innovation (Ferreira et al.,
2014). The risk tolerance of this financial system is reflected in the market’s risk-bearing and
risk-mitigation ability when it comes to the trial-and-error process of technological innovation
and the failure risk associated with technological innovation (Zhang et al., 2016).
Furthermore, changing from debt financing to equity financing has improved the
technological innovation risk preference of enterprises, and even encouraged workers and
researchers to take risks to become entrepreneurs. This encourages more social resources to
invest in high-risk technological innovation activities, promoting the degree of technological
innovation in society as a whole. Several studies show that well-developed stock markets (which
are also pivotal to VC and other forms of private equity finance) have a positive impact on R&D
and innovation, particularly high-tech industries (Brown et al., 2017; Grant and Yeo, 2018).
Compared with bank debt financing, the higher risk tolerance of stock equity financing
endogenously encourages risk-averse enterprises to become more risk-prone. Stock equity
financing can enhance the innovation risk preference of enterprises more than bank debt
financing, and is more conducive to improving the performance of technological innovation
by encouraging enterprises technological innovation and business risk taking. Empirical
studies have also shown that a capital-market-based financial structure supports
technology innovation activity more efficiently than a bank-based financial structure
does (Khan et al., 2018; Brown et al., 2009). Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H1. Stock market equity financing has a significant positive impact on technological
innovation.
H2. Bank debt financing has a significant negative impact on technological innovation.
Because enterprises are faced with different technological risks and financing needs at
different stages of their development, there are differences in the impacts of different financing
methods on innovation. The main sources of funds for enterprises have shown a changing
trend of “government subsidy→internal financing→equity financing→government
subsidy” (Hsu et al., 2014). Due to the development of financial systems throughout the
world, developed countries often have developed stock market and VC markets. However, the
financial system of developing countries is imperfect, as the stock markets and VC markets
are not yet mature. Increased opening to the outside world and financial development will
BJM significantly promotes the performance of technological innovation (Narayan and Narayan,
14,4 2013). It has also been found that there are differences in the impacts of bank credit on
economic growth in different countries (Owen and Temesvary, 2014). The main reasons for
the differences are bank development, stock market development and the degree of legal
soundness. Both innovation and financial development promote economic growth, but the
short-term effect is not obvious (Pradhan et al., 2016).
702 Due to the development of the world’s financial systems, developed countries are
generally in the innovation-driven development stage, with a more mature stock market.
Also important are government support for technological innovation and entrepreneurial
support (Hong et al., 2016; Rigotti and Chris, 2012). It has been found that the degree of
development of the stock market and the degree of legal soundness of different countries
have different effects on economic growth (Brown and Osborne, 2013; Souza et al., 2014). It
has been shown that both innovation and financial development can promote economic
growth (Pradhan et al., 2016), so it is necessary for governments to improve the efficiency of
financial resource allocation in order to maintain the competitive advantage of their country
in the scale of innovation.
It is well known that public policy plays an important role in shaping a country’s
national innovative capacity (Furman et al., 2002). The higher the government efficiency is,
the greater the efficiency of resource allocation to the policy, legal, operational and financing
aspects of technological innovation (Bertoni and Tykvová, 2015). However, the government
does not need to try to choose where to innovate but only to support any innovations shown
to work (Nanda and Rhodes-Kropf, 2017). Obviously, good government efficiency can
improve the allocation of financial resources, promoting the development of the stock
market and bank system, thus effectively supporting technological innovation. On the
contrary, low government efficiency reduces the efficiency of the allocation of financial
resources, resulting in the failure to support high-risk technological innovation projects,
thus inhibiting technological innovation. In short, improving government efficiency can
optimize the environment of innovation, and support innovation through laws and policies
that regulate and coordinate innovation activities (Hong et al., 2016). Therefore, we make the
following hypothesis:
H3. Government efficiency has a significant positive impact on technological innovation
in developed countries.
In addition, considering the impact of the economic cycle on the financial markets of
different countries, this paper argues that in different stages of economic development, the
support for technological innovation offered by financial systems differs. In periods of
economic uptrend, with the rapid growth of the real economy and a booming stock market,
it is easier for enterprises to obtain financial support for innovation through external equity
financing, which, of course, leads to improved technological innovation (Hsu et al., 2014). In
periods of economic downtrend, the deterioration of the external business environment
leads to the decline of corporate profitability, which limits the endogenous financing of
technological innovation, and financial crises can lead to a severe “funding gap” in the
financing of technological development and innovation (Block and Sandner, 2009).
Prior research has found evidence that innovative firms have a higher demand for
external capital, and that this demand seems to have increased since the financial crisis (Lee
et al., 2015). However, the availability of finance for these firms worsened considerably in the
crisis (Zouaghi et al., 2018). Several studies indicate that stock market financing has an
anti-cyclical effect because it has greater risk tolerance for technological innovation (Tian
and Wang, 2014; Zhang et al., 2016). Furthermore, stock markets in developed countries
(innovation-intensive economies) offer higher returns and lower risk during crisis episodes,
and investors value innovation more during difficult times (Adcock et al., 2014). And, stock
markets in developed countries have the functions of risk-mitigation and risk absorption, Equity
which can play important roles as financial stabilizers in periods of economic downturn financing and
(Brown et al., 2017; Müller and Zimmermann, 2009). Thus, we argue that stock market debt financing
financing can play a positive role in supporting technological innovation regardless of
whether the economy is in a period of uptrend or downtrend. Building on these arguments,
we make the following hypotheses:
H4. Equity financing in developed countries’ stock markets has a significant positive 703
impact on technological innovation in both uptrend and downtrend periods.
Patent i;t ¼ a0 þa1 Patent i;t1 þb1 FDi;t1 þb2 Otheri;t þei;t ; (1)
where Patenti,t represents the technological innovation variable of country i in the year t. We
choose patent application as the index to measure the development degree of technological
innovation in a country. FDi,t is the financial development index, which indicates the growth of
bank private credit (domestic credits ratio GDP of private department) or stock market
development index (stock market capital value ratio GDP). The other explaining variables
include human capital (the number of R&D staff members), infrastructure construction (the
number of internet users), trade openness (the total GDP ratio of import and export),
governmental efficiency (the efficiency government provides public service) and the national
dummy variable (national economic development level). αi, βi are the estimated coefficient and
ei,t is the residual term.
In order to better reflect the difference between equity financing and debt financing on
technological innovation, the empirical study analyzes the impact of stock and bank
financing systems on technological innovation respectively. In order to investigate the joint
impact of the two financing methods on technological innovation, this paper puts forward a
BJM model expressing the joint impact of bank and equity financing on technological innovation.
14,4 The regression model is shown as follows:
Patent i;t ¼ a0 þa1 Patent i;t1 þb1 Banki;t1 þb2 Stocki;t1 þb3 Other i;t þei;t : (2)
Considering the lag effect of external financing on technological innovation, Stock and Bank
in this model use a period-lagged index to measure the supporting effect of the former
704 external financing in supporting technological innovation in the current period. As well, the
models include the lag period for the explained variables, which may lead to a potential
endogenous correlation between financing and innovation. However, when applied to
equations with lagged dependent variables, the traditional fixed and random effects settings
will lead to biased parameter estimates and inconsistency, potentially affecting the accuracy
of the model. To address these issues of endogenous and biases, the regression models have
been estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM), developed for dynamic
panel models by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998).
Based on previous studies (Beck, 2009; Beck et al., 2016), we used the ratio of domestic credit
in the private sector to GDP to measure the development of bank debt financing. The
indicator reflects the direct or indirect support of bank debt financing for technological
innovation. The calculations are as follows:
Banki;t ¼ Bank Credit i;t =GDP i;t : (4)
3.2.3 Control variables. Based on previous literature (Ruan and Jin, 2017; Bertoni and
Tykvová, 2015; Egger and Keuschnigg, 2015; Furman et al., 2002), we used six control
variables in our analysis: R&D expenditure, which refers to the current expenditure and
capital expenditure on innovation, including basic research, applied research and Equity
experimental development, reflecting the level of investment in technological innovation; financing and
human capital, expressed in terms of the number of R&D staff members, which reflects the debt financing
level of human resources involved in technological innovation; infrastructure construction,
represented by the number of internet users, which reflects the support of internet
development for technological innovation in the context of the information age; trade
openness, expressed by the ratio of total imports and exports of goods and services to GDP, 705
reflecting the level of trade and the degree of openness of a country; degree of knowledge
spillover, expressed by net inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI), which reflects the
extent to which a country absorbs, introduces and utilizes the technological and managerial
advantages from foreign capital; and government efficiency, expressed by the efficiency of
the government’s delivery of public services as determined by the number of civil servants
in the global governance index database, reflecting the quality of public service delivery and
policy formulation and implementation by a government. The data for this are derived from
the government effectiveness index in the data of the Worldwide Governance Index.
In addition, the technological innovation capacity of countries is obviously affected by
their level of economic development. Therefore, in order to control the differences in the
stages of economic development between countries, this paper also sets up a dummy
variable for the degree of national development. The definitions and data sources for each
variable are shown in Table I.
3.4 Methodology
Because the lag term of the dependent variable would lead to problems of endogeny for the
explanatory variables, the GMM is used to estimate the model (Windmeijer, 2005). The
GMM is divided into difference-generalized method of moments (Diff-GMM) and system-
generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). As the SYS-GMM method uses more tool
variables than the Diff-GMM, the standard deviation is smaller and its estimation is more
accurate, so the two-step SYS-GMM will be used to test the model.
In order to find the different effects of external financing on technological innovation
under different financing modes, we expand our regression models into four sub-models:
Model (1), original model, without considering external financing; Model (2), debt model,
Variables Patent Stock Bank Research Human Infra Trade FDI Gov
Patent 1
Stock −0.073 1
Bank 0.446*** 0.403*** 1
Research 0.570*** 0.010 0.383*** 1
Human 0.032 −0.227** −0.183*** −0.211*** 1
Infra 0.211** 0.173*** 0.466*** 0.407* 0.139** 1
Trade −0.474*** 0.546** 0.012 −0.136** −0.026 0.160*** 1
Table III.
Pearson correlation FDI −0.212** 0.324** 0.055 −0.091 −0.060 0.122** 0.480** 1
coefficient of Gov 0.243** 0.321** 0.494** 0.526** −0.281** 0.356** 0.206** 0.152** 1
major variables Notes: *,**,***Significant at 10, 5 and 1 percent levels, respectively
only considering debt financing; Model (3), equity model, only considering equity financing; Equity
and Model (4), integral model, considering both debt financing and equity financing. The financing and
sub-models take different financing modes as their core explanatory variables, use the same debt financing
control variables, and use the same sample period. This empirical strategy allows us to
better compare the different effects of different financing modes on technological innovation
based on the SYS-GMM.
707
4. Empirical analysis
4.1 Unit root test and cointegration test
Using the dynamic panel data model, the stability of the panel data must be analyzed before
regression to avoid “spurious regression,” ensuring the validity of the estimation results.
Therefore, the unit root test is needed for the estimated parameters. In keeping with
previous studies, the panel data unit root of each variable was tested by LLC, IPS and
Fisher-ADF test methods (Im et al., 2003; Levin et al., 2002; Maddala and Wu, 1999), and the
results are as shown in Table IV. The results of the unit root test show that the first-order
difference of each variable has no unit root and is a stationary series.
The purpose of the cointegration test is to examine whether there is a long-run equilibrium
relationship between financing variables and technological innovation. Considering the
limitation of the sample size, we proceed to test for the existence of a long-run equilibrium by
using the error correction model (ECM) panel cointegration test (Westerlund, 2007).
The values of the panel cointegration statistics based on 400 bootstrap replications are
presented in Table V. For each cross-section of the interpretive variables Stock and Bank, the
Gt statistics and Ga statistic are based on the OLS regression estimate and the Pt statistics
and Pa statistics are based on the OLS residual regression estimation reject the null
hypothesis, “there is no cointegration relationship,” at a 10 percent significance level.
The results of the cointegration tests provide clear support for the long-run equilibrium
relationships between financing variables and technological innovation.
710
Table VII.
and downtrend
regression results
economic uptrend
between periods of
The comparison of the
Economic uptrend (1996–2005) Economic downtrend (2006–2015)
Variables Model (1) Model (2) Model (3) Model (4) Model (1) Model (2) Model (3) Model (4)
L. Patent 0.880*** (170.20) 0.912*** (114.58) 0.937*** (51.10) 0.973*** (48.66) 0.966*** (70.01) 0.962*** (68.68) 0.976*** (93.49) 0.973*** (82.67)
Bank −0.264*** (−7.39) −0.290*** (−10.99) −0.0596*** (−3.82) −0.0790*** (−5.18)
Stock 0.0848*** (5.04) 0.133*** (8.28) 0.0201*** (9.72) 0.0257*** (9.23)
Research 0.0703*** (5.55) 0.0382** (2.14) −0.0147 (−0.26) −0.0214 (−0.50) 0.102*** (7.88) 0.0821*** (4.74) 0.0285 (1.04) 0.0122 (0.49)
Human 0.197*** (6.80) 0.171*** (5.94) 0.154*** (2.80) 0.0957 (1.60) −0.0127 (−0.45) −0.0214 (−0.75) 0.0284 (0.66) 0.0757** (2.15)
Infra −0.000967*** (−4.46) −0.0000242 (−0.10) −0.00116*** (−2.85) −0.000351 (−0.78) −0.00227*** (−3.67) −0.00182*** (−2.61) −0.000689 (−1.44) −0.000515 (−0.82)
Trade −0.147*** (−7.23) −0.0814*** (−3.13) −0.0957*** (−2.74) −0.0266 (−0.59) 0.125*** (7.20) 0.117*** (5.96) −0.00914 (−1.33) −0.0211*** (−3.53)
FDI −0.00159*** (−5.81) −0.00161*** (−4.48) −0.00187*** (−4.17) −0.00211*** (−6.54) 0.00119*** (15.03) 0.00121*** (14.02) 0.000704*** (7.94) 0.000777*** (11.02)
Gov 0.227*** (11.35) 0.208*** (9.90) 0.0581** (2.52) 0.0311 (0.64) 0.0479 (1.29) 0.0844** (2.38) −0.0594 (−1.51) 0.00153 (0.07)
Constant −0.882*** (−3.68) −0.713*** (−2.90) −0.715 (−1.57) −0.360 (−0.81) 0.156 (0.59) 0.281 (1.04) 0.0442 (0.14) −0.293 (−1.25)
Sargan test 25.125 25.586 25.601 25.608 28.085 29.677 26.892 26.072
p-values 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 0.372 0.378 0.891 0.985
AR(2) 1.004 1.112 1.129 1.139 −0.632 −0.733 −0.658 −0.491
p-values 0.277 0.266 0.258 0.2543 0.428 0.463 0.491 0.623
Obs 315 315 315 315 315 315 315 315
Notes: **,***Significant at 5 and 1 percent levels, respectively
exists regardless of economic cyclical fluctuations. In fact, financial crises can lead to a Equity
severe “funding gap” in the financing of technological development and innovation (Block financing and
and Sandner, 2009). However, our results suggest that equity financing with powerful risk debt financing
tolerance capacity is more likely to accelerate technology development and improve
innovation performance, no matter what the current period is in the economic cycle. There
are three main reasons why equity financing can encourage innovation during periods of
economic downtrend. First, economic crises can reduce the price of capital and accelerate the 711
optimal allocation of innovation elements. Second, economic downtrend may reduce
investor income expectations and promote companies to pay more attention to long-term
innovation investment (Drover et al., 2017). Third, some pioneering and promising
technology enterprises may engage in talent-showing during periods of crisis, thereby
accelerating the realization of technological track transitions and industrial upgrading.
In addition, the influence of government efficiency on technological innovation is
significantly positive in periods of both economic uptrend and downtrend, which indicates
that government efficiency in developed countries have a significant supporting effect on
technological innovation. It reflects that developed countries tend to have higher
government performance, as well as higher degrees of policy support and business
environment support for technological innovation.
Furthermore, we tested the robustness of the empirical results. First, we adjusted the
research samples by removing those countries with relatively weak stock markets like Greece
and Chile. Then we used the selected sub-samples to re-test the empirical model. It was found
that the regression results were basically consistent with the total sample regression results;
the regression results are shown in Table VIII. Second, the one-step SYS-GMM was used to
estimate the model again. The regression estimation coefficient of the core index showed little
change, and the significance and direction were basically consistent with the above
conclusions. Also, there is a significant positive correlation between government efficiency and
technological innovation. This result supports H3. Therefore, the empirical results and research
conclusions of this paper are robust in terms of time periods and different estimation methods.
5. Conclusions
Based on the current situation of technological innovation financial support systems in
various countries, this paper has compared the risk tolerance to technological innovation of
stock market equity financing and bank debt financing. Based on the transnational sample
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Corresponding author
Sheng Zhang can be contacted at: zhangsheng@xjtu.edu.cn
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