Towards a Simultaneous Approach of R&D and Firm's Capital Structure: The Portuguese Industry Evidence

Fernando Paulo Belfo, Adelino Fortunato

Conference Paper in Proceedings of the 8º Encontro Nacional de Economia Industrial. Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Lisboa, January 7, 2000

One of the stylised facts about financing R&D is that firms pursuing highly innovative investment policies tend to use less debt in their capital structures. We think that such an idea supports the intent to examine investment policy decision and capital structure choice as endogenous. The paper uses a 3SLS method to estimate a simultaneous model of capital structure and investment policy and R&D outlays are treated as a proxy of investment policy. Results give evidence on the predicted relationship between R&D and capital structure when we use a measure of short term debt but the same is not true with a long term measure of indebtedness.