TY - JOUR AU - Hall,Bronwyn H. AU - Lerner,Josh TI - The Financing of R&D and Innovation JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15325 PY - 2009 Y2 - September 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15325 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15325.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Bronwyn H. Hall Dept. of Economics 549 Evans Hall UC Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 Tel: 510/642-3878 Fax: 510/548-5561 E-Mail: bhhall@nber.org Josh Lerner Harvard Business School Rock Center 214 Boston, MA 02163 Tel: 617/495-6065 Fax: 617/496-7357 E-Mail: jlerner@hbs.edu AB - Evidence on the “funding gap“ for investment innovation is surveyed. The focus is on financial market reasons for underinvestment that exist even when externality-induced underinvestment is absent. We conclude that while small and new innovative firms experience high costs of capital that are only partly mitigated by the presence of venture capital, the evidence for high costs of R&D capital for large firms is mixed. Nevertheless, large established firms do appear to prefer internal funds for financing such investments and they manage their cash flow to ensure this. Evidence shows that there are limits to venture capital as a solution to the funding gap, especially in countries where public equity markets for VC exit are not highly developed. We conclude by suggesting areas for further research. ER -