This paper investigates the effects of R&D and innovation activities of firms on the risk of bankruptcy. The analysis is carried out on data drawn from the EU-EFIGE Survey and Amadeus Database (Bureau Van Dijk) on European manufacturing firms over the years 2009–2014. The empirical evidence shows that default probability is increasing in R&D investments and decreasing in innovation and productivity of research, measured by the ratio of innovation revenues to R&D outlays. In addition, to disentangle the influence of different innovation strategies (product, process, and patenting), 16 different firm profiles are compared. Firms carrying out R&D, adopting process innovation, and filing for patents are found to show the lowest probability of default. Sensitivity checks indicate that research and innovation do not affect the risk of financial distress events short of default (such as reorganization or application for insolvency procedure). Our findings are robust to potential endogeneity and hence allow for causal inference about the relationship between research and innovation and corporate bankruptcy.

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研究、创新和破产：来自欧洲制造公司的证据

本文调查了企业的研发和创新活动对破产风险的影响。该分析是根据来自 EU-EFIGE 调查和 Amadeus 数据库 (Bureau Van Dijk) 关于 2009-2014 年欧洲制造公司的数据进行的。经验证据表明，研发投资的违约概率正在增加，而创新和研究生产力的下降，以创新收入与研发支出的比率来衡量。此外，为了理清不同创新战略（产品、流程和专利）的影响，我们比较了 16 家不同的公司概况。发现进行研发、采用流程创新和申请专利的公司的违约概率最低。敏感性检查表明，研究和创新不会影响除违约以外的财务困境事件（例如重组或申请破产程序）的风险。我们的研究结果对潜在的内生性是稳健的，因此可以对研究与创新与公司破产之间的关系进行因果推断。