Financial Constraints and Innovation: Why Poor Countries Don't Catch Up

This paper examines micro-level channels through which financial development can affect such macroeconomic outcomes as level of income. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm’s innovation activities. Theoretical predictions are tested using unique firm survey data, which provide direct measures for innovations and firm-specific financial constraints, as well as information on shocks to firms’ internal funds that serve as firm-level instruments for financial constraints. We find unambiguous evidence that financial constraints restrain the ability of domestically owned firms to innovate and hence to catch up to the technological frontier.