Innovazione, finanza e sviluppo: aspetti del dibattito teorico e dell'evidenza empirica

According to Schumpeter, one of the most important problems of innovation is the search for new financial resources to dedicate to research, experimentation and innovation. The aim of this article is to provide a summary on the subject of the discussion concerning the problems that corporate-companies have to face regarding technological development: in particular with reference to the governance and, as a consequence, to the relationship between property and management in the choice of an adequate financial structure, (going beyond the neutrality implicit in the famous Modigliani-Miller theorem). In particular, with reference to the Italian productive system, so deeply bank-oriented, compared with the English and American capital-market oriented systems, the focus is on the major difficulties in financing innovative projects. This is due to the absolute lack of “venture capital” systems, and also to the attitude of the banking system to finance “productive capacity” and the “expansion” phases of the enterprises lifes, rather than the management capability and the “start-up phases”. All this and the some situations of “credit rationing” contributes to explain both the relative backwardness of the innovative Italian system, and the massive appeal to self-finance support which medium and small companies are obliged to adopt in order to introduce research and innovation.

Ferruccio Bresolin, Innovazione, finanza e sviluppo: aspetti del dibattito teorico e dell'evidenza empirica in "ARGOMENTI" 17/2006, pp , DOI: