Is financial innovation necessary for sustaining economic growth? To address this question, we build a Schumpeterian model in which entrepreneurs earn profits by inventing better goods and profit-maximizing financiers arise to screen entrepreneurs. The model has two novel features. First, financiers engage in the costly but potentially profitable process of innovation: they can invent better methods for screening entrepreneurs. Second, every screening process becomes less effective as technology advances. The model predicts that technological innovation and economic growth eventually stop unless financiers innovate. Empirical evidence is consistent with this dynamic, synergistic model of financial and technological innovation

We exploit the deregulation of interstate bank branching laws to test whether banking competition affects innovation. We find robust evidence that banking competition reduces state-level innovation by public corporations headquartered within deregulating states. Innovation increases among private firms that are dependent on external finance and that have limited access to credit from local banks. We argue that banking competition enables small, innovative firms to secure financing instead of being acquired by public corporations. Therefore, banking competition reduces the supply of innovative targets, which reduces the portion of state-level innovation attributable to public corporations. Overall, these results shed light on the real effects of banking competition and the determinants of innovation

While innovation matters for competitiveness, it may expose firms to survival risks. Using plant-product data for Chile and discretetime hazard models, we show that innovating plants have a lower hazard of exit. However, risk has a strong impact on the innovation-exit relationship: only innovators that retain diversified sources of revenue or face lower market risk are less likely to die. Single-product innovators are at greater risk of exiting. Exposure to technical risk does not affect exit probabilities differentially. We provide tentative evidence that singleproduct innovators have higher profits, which helps to rationalize their innovation decision despite the increased risk of exit

We study the dynamics of an innovative industry in which agents learn about the likelihood of negative shocks. Managers can exert risk prevention effort to mitigate the consequences of shocks. If no shock occurs, confidence improves, attracting managers to the innovative sector. But, when confidence becomes high, inefficient managers exerting low risk-prevention effort also enter. This stimulates growth, while reducing risk prevention. The longer the boom, the larger the losses if a shock occurs. Although these dynamics arise in the first-best, asymmetric information generates excessive entry of inefficient managers, earning informational rents, inflating the innovative sector, and increasing its vulnerability

We study the dynamics of an innovative industry when agents learn about its strength, i.e., the likelihood that it gets hit by negative shocks. Managers can exert risk-prevention effort to mitigate the consequences of such shocks. As time goes by, if no shock occurs, confidence improves. This attracts managers to the innovative sector. But, when confidence becomes high, less managers exerting low risk-prevention effort also enter. This accelerates the growth of the industry, while inducing a decline in risk-prevention. The longer the boom, the stronger the confidence, the larger the losses if a shock occurs. While the above dynamics arise in the first best, with asymmetric information there is excessive entry of inefficient managers, earning informational rents at the expense of efficient managers. This inflates the innovative sector and increases its vulnerability

We provide empirical evidence on the positive effect of non-executive employee stock options on corporate innovation. The positive effect is more pronounced when employees are more important for innovation, when free-riding among employees is weaker, when options are granted broadly to most employees, when the average expiration period of options is longer, and when employee stock ownership is lower. Further analysis reveals that employee stock options foster innovation mainly through the risk-taking incentive, rather than the performance-based incentive created by stock options

We examine the asset pricing implications of a production economy whose long‐term growth prospects are endogenously determined by innovation and R&D. In equilibrium, R&D endogenously drives a small, persistent component in productivity that generates long‐run uncertainty about economic growth. With recursive preferences, households fear that persistent downturns in economic growth are accompanied by low asset valuations and command high‐risk premia in asset markets. Empirically, we find substantial evidence for innovation‐driven low‐frequency movements in aggregate growth rates and asset market valuations. In short, equilibrium growth is risky

We analyze location choices of foreign-born science and engineering students receiving PhDs from US universities. Foreign students who stay in the United States are positively selected on observables. They tend to stay in the United States during periods of strong US economic growth and during periods of weak home country economic growth. Foreign students from higher-income countries and from recently democratized countries tend not to remain in the United States. Education and innovation may therefore be part of a virtuous cycle by which education enhances a country’s prospects for innovation and innovation makes the country more attractive for scientists and engineers

We show that several asset pricing models that rely on long-run risks imply that the state of the economy can be captured by factors derived from the price-dividend ratios of stock portfolios. We find two factors with small growth and large value tilts are important for this purpose, thereby relating the Fama-French model and the Bansal-Yaron and Merton intertemporal asset pricing models. As predicted by the model, these price-dividend ratio factors track consumption volatility and predict future consumption and stock dividends, and the covariance of returns with their innovations explains the cross-section of average returns of several stock portfolios

We rely on a model with incomplete contracts and bargaining power to argue that trade credit (TC) can serve as a commitment device for making relationship-specific investments (RSIs). Unlike existing theories, we explain within a single theoretical framework why TC is affected by firms’ bargaining power and by the specialized nature of transacted goods. Using a large panel of publicly listed firms and innovation-based proxies for RSI, we find strong support for the model’s predictions: TC increases in upstream firm’s RSI and downstream firm’s market power. Endogeneity concerns are addressed by using the passage of innovation-increasing state laws to instrument for RSI and import penetration to instrument for bargaining power