International R&D spillovers: the role of financial markets

摘要

This article examines the role of financial markets as a catalyst for international technology diffusion using a panel data set on 72 countries over the period 1981 to 2005. The results suggest that countries with better developed financial markets benefit more from foreign R&D stocks to promote domestic productivity growth. This finding is robust to the inclusion of proxies for human capital and domestic R&D stocks as alternative measures of absorptive capacity.