Impact of Financial Development on Industrial R\&D: Evidence from OECD Countries

Labesh Kumar and Rebecca Neumann

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Whether financial development promotes industrial innovation depends not just on how developed a country’s financial system is, but on which dimensions of that system are well developed. This paper examines how depth, access, and efficiency of both financial institutions and financial markets shape R&D investment across industries that differ in their reliance on external finance. Using industry-level data from the ISIC Rev. 4 classification across 18 OECD countries from 1995 to 2019, and drawing on the IMF’s multidimensional Financial Development Index, we analyze how country-level financial development measures interact with an industry-level external finance dependence measure to influence R&D intensity measured relative to output and value added. Our findings show that the overall level of financial development matters primarily through depth. In particular, the depth of financial institutions and, to a lesser extent, the depth of financial markets significantly raise R&D intensity in industries that depend more heavily on external funding. Measures of access and efficiency display little systematic effect. The results are strongest within manufacturing industries, where innovation activity is concentrated. These findings highlight the importance of financial structure and, in particular, the scale and capacity of financial intermediation, in shaping the allocation of innovative investment across industries.

Keywords: R&D intensity; financial development; financial institution depth; external finance dependence; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G20 O16 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03-24
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/128447/1/MPRA_paper_128447.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:128447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().