Collaborative R&D as a strategy to attenuate financing constraints

The ability of firms to establish R&D collaborations that combine resources, exploit complementary know-how, and internalize R&D externalities has been shown to be of high importance for the successful creation and implementation of new knowledge. We argue in this article that collaborative R&D may not only be beneficial in terms of appropriability of returns to R&D investment, access to the partner's knowledge base and the exploitation of scale and scope in R&D, but that it may also be a strategy to cope with financing constraints for R&D. Studying panel data we show that collaboration with science alleviates liquidity constraints for research. Horizontal collaboration reduces liquidity constraints for both research as well as R and D. Vertical collaboration has no such effects.