To what extent can firm, industry- and country-level factors explain firm-level R&D spending? Using a comprehensive dataset, which consists of 94,178 firm-year observations covering 42 countries and spanning 1981–2013, we examine this question by capturing multiple dimensions of the market and institutional characteristics. Our findings suggest that firm, industry- and country-level determinants jointly have the maximum explanatory power. More importantly, firm- and industry-level determinants have higher explanatory power than country-level determinants. We also show that the effect is similar for countries with weaker and stronger institutional scores related to R&D and for industries that are R&D intensive. These results are robust to adopting alternative empirical specifications of R&D intensity and correcting for missing R&D values. Our study has strong policy implications that show when international firms are investing in R&D related to FDI, they need to focus more on their own organisation and capital structures in the host country based on how the project is managed internally.

公司、行业和国家层面的因素在多大程度上可以解释公司层面的研发支出？使用由 94,178 个公司年度观察组成的综合数据集，涵盖 42 个国家，跨越 1981 年至 2013 年，我们通过捕捉市场和制度特征的多个维度来研究这个问题。我们的研究结果表明，企业、行业和国家层面的决定因素共同具有最大的解释力。更重要的是，企业和行业层面的决定因素比国家层面的决定因素具有更高的解释力。我们还表明，与研发相关的制度得分越来越弱的国家和研发密集型行业的影响是相似的。这些结果对于采用替代的研发强度经验规范和纠正缺失的研发是稳健的。D 值。我们的研究具有很强的政策含义，表明当国际公司投资与 FDI 相关的研发时，他们需要根据项目的内部管理方式，更多地关注自己在东道国的组织和资本结构。