Bruce C. Petersen

R&D and internal finance: a panel study of small firms in high-tech industries

Since Joseph Schumpeter, economists have argued that internal finance should be an important determinant of R&D expenditures. Yet almost without exception, previous empirical studies have not found evidence of such a relation. Using newly available data, the authors investigate this puzzle with a panel of 179 small firms in high-tech industries. Under each estimation strategy they employ, the authors find an economically large and statistically significant relationship between R&D investment and internal finance. Their results are consistent with the view that, because of capital market imperfections, the flow of internal finance is the principal determinant of the rate at which small, high-tech firms acquire technology through R&D. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.

Is the Growth of Small Firms Constrained by Internal Finance

This paper examines the long-standing theory that the growth of small firms is often constrained by the quantity of internal finance. Under plausible assumptions, when financing constraints are binding, an additional dollar of internal finance should generate slightly more than an additional dollar of growth in assets. This quantitative prediction should not hold for the relatively small number of firms which access external equity. We test these predictions with a panel of more than 1, 600 small firms and find that the growth of most firms is constrained by internal finance. Our results have implications for several different research literatures, including models of firm growth.

Capital Market Imperfections, High-Tech Investment, and New Equity Financing

Highly variable returns, asymmetric information and a lack of collateral should cause small high-tech firms to have poor access to debt. New equity financing has several advantages over debt, but may be costly compared to internal finance. We examine an unbalanced panel of over 2,400 publicly traded US high-tech companies over the period 1981--98. Most small high-tech firms obtain little debt financing. New equity financing, in the form of the initial public offering, is very important and permits a major increase in firm size. After going public, comparatively few firms make heavy use of external finacing. Copyright Royal Economic Society 2002

Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities are Useful: A Comment on Kaplan and Zingales

A recent paper in this Journal by Kaplan and Zingales reexamines a subset of firms from work of Fazzari, Hubbard, and Petersen and criticizes the usefulness of investment-cash flow sensitivities for detecting financing constraints. We show that the Kaplan and Zingales theoretical model fails to capture the approach employed in the literature and thus does not provide an effective critique. Moreover, we describe why their empirical classification system is flawed in identifYing both whether firms are constrained and the relative degree of constraints across firm groups. We conclude that their results do not support their conclusions about the usefulness of investment-cash flow sensitivities.

Working Capital and Fixed Investment: New Evidence on Financing Constraints

This article presents new tests for finance constraints on investment by emphasizing the often-neglected role of working capital as both a use and a source of funds. The coefficient of endogenous working capital investment is negative in a fixed-investment regression, as expected if working capital competes with fixed investment for a limited pool of finance. This finding addresses a criticism of previous research on finance constraints, that cash flows may simply proxy shifts in investment demand. In addition, previous studies may have underestimated the impact of finance constraints on growth and investment because firms smooth fixed investment in the short run with working capital.

Business Cycles and the Relationship Between Concentration and Price-Cost Margins

Using a newly constructed panel data base, we examine changes in price-cost margins in 284 manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1981. A key finding is a dramatic narrowing of the spread between the margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries over this period. We provide evidence that this narrowing is a result of the greater sensitivity of price-cost margins in more concentrated industries to demand fluctuations. This finding is robust to the inclusion of other industry variables and to measures of import competition. The results indicate that cross sectional estimates of the concentration-margins relationship are likely to be both biased and misleading.

Market Structure and Cyclical Fluctuations in U.S. Manufacturing

The relevance of imperfect competition for models of aggregate economic fluctuations has received increased attention from researchers in both macroeconomics and industrial organization. Measuring properly the size of industry markups of price over marginal cost is important both for assessing the role of market structure and for determining the extent to which excess capacity is a significant feature accompanying imperfect competition in American industry. Using a panel data set on four-digit Census manufacturing industries, this paper expands recent work by Robert Hall on the importance of market structure for understanding cyclical fluctuations. We outline a methodology for estimating industry markups of price over cost and the influence of market structure on cyclical movements in total factor productivity. While we find evidence to support the proposition that price exceeds marginal cost in U.S. manufacturing, our results offer only limited support for the notion that markups are importantly related to differences in industry concentration, though the effect of unionization is important. Concentration effects are important only in industries producing durable goods or differentiated consumer goods. In addition, much of the estimated markup of price over marginal cost is accounted for by fixed costs related to overhead labor, advertising, and central office expenses; we do not find compelling evidence of substantial evidence of excess capacity in most industries.

Financing constraints and inventory investment: a comparative study with high-frequency panel data

This study provides new evidence of the importance of financing constraints for explaining the dramatic cycles in inventory investment. We compare the empirical performance of different financial variables (coverage ratio, cash stocks, and cash flow) used in previous research to test for the presence of financing constraints. The comparison is undertaken in a common framework with an identical sample and high-frequency (quarterly) firm panel data. Cash flow is much more successful than cash stocks or coverage in explaining the facts about inventory investment across firm size, different inventory cycles, and different manufacturing sectors.

The Intertemporal Stability of the Concentration-Margins Relationship

Using a longitudinal data base, we find that there has been a substantial narrowing of the spread between the price-cost margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries. Including measures of macroeconomic fluctuations into standard price-cost margin regressions, we find significant differences in cyclical behavior across market structure. We also explore a possible explanation, unionization, for differences in cyclical behavior. Finally, we investigate the degree to which our results are affected by the potential simultaneity of concentration, advertising, and the price-cost margin.

Law, Stock Markets, and Innovation

We study a broad sample of firms across 32 countries and find that strong shareholder protections and better access to stock market financing lead to substantially higher long-run rates of R&D investment, particularly in small firms, but are unimportant for fixed capital investment. Credit market development has a modest impact on fixed investment but no impact on R&D. These findings connect law and stock markets with innovative activities key to economic growth, and show that legal rules and financial developments affecting the availability of external equity financing are particularly important for risky, intangible investments not easily financed with debt.