Financing Innovation

William R. Kerr, Ramana Nanda

NBER Working Paper No. 20676
Issued in November 2014
NBER Program(s):Corporate Finance Program, Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program

We review the recent literature on the financing of innovation, inclusive of large companies and new startups. This research strand has been very active over the past five years, generating important new findings, questioning some long-held beliefs, and creating its own puzzles. Our review outlines the growing body of work that documents a role for debt financing related to innovation. We highlight the new literature on learning and experimentation across multi-stage innovation projects and how this impacts optimal financing design. We further highlight the strong interaction between financing choices for innovation and changing external conditions, especially reduced experimentation costs.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w20676

Published: Ramana Nanda & William R. Kerr, 2015. "Financing Innovation," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 445-462, December. citation courtesy of

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