Abstract
We aim to tackle the longstanding debate on whether stock liquidity enhances or impedes firm innovation. This topic is of interest because innovation is crucial for firm- and national-level competitiveness and stock liquidity can be altered by financial market regulations. Using a difference-in-differences approach that relies on the exogenous variation in liquidity generated by regulatory changes, we find that an increase in liquidity causes a reduction in future innovation. We identify two possible mechanisms through which liquidity impedes innovation: increased exposure to hostile takeovers and higher presence of institutional investors who do not actively gather information or monitor.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2085-2125 |
Number of pages | 41 |
Journal | Journal of Finance |
Volume | 69 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2014 the American Finance Association.