This paper investigates the relationship between profit efficiency, finance and innovation. By adopting stochastic frontiers, we pioneer the use of a novel dataset merging firm level survey data with balance sheet information for a large sample of European companies. We find that firms having difficulties in access to finance as well as firms introducing product innovation display an incentive to improve their efficiency. While innovation produces benefit for firms’ profitability, financial constraints impose a discipline to the firms forcing them to cut unproductive costs that reduce the profitability. We document nuanced differences between firms in industry and services, while they are more pronounced when we look at disaggregation across High-Tech and Low-Tech companies. From a policy perspective, our results enrich the understanding on the link between innovation, financial constraints and efficiency, which goes beyond the idea that easier access to finance is the panacea to get higher performance.

本文研究了利润效率、财务和创新之间的关系。通过采用随机前沿，我们率先使用新的数据集，将公司层面的调查数据与大量欧洲公司样本的资产负债表信息相结合。我们发现难以获得融资的公司以及引入产品创新的公司表现出提高效率的动机。虽然创新为公司的盈利能力带来好处，但财务约束对公司施加了约束，迫使他们削减非生产成本，从而降低盈利能力。我们记录了行业和服务业公司之间的细微差别，而当我们查看高科技公司和低技术公司的分类时，它们更加明显。从政策角度看，获得更高性能的灵丹妙药。