The Financing of Research and Development

Evidence on the “funding gap” for R&D is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment in R&D that persist even in the absence of externality-induced underinvestment. The conclusions are that 1) small and new innovative firms experience high costs of capital that are only partly mitigated by the presence of venture capital; 2) evidence for high costs of R&D capital for large firms is mixed, although these firms do prefer internal funds for financing these investments; 3) there are limits to venture capital as a solution to the funding gap, especially in countries where public equity markets are not highly developed; and 4) further study of governmental seed capital and subsidy programs using quasi-experimental methods is warranted.