Ownership Structure and R&D Orientation in ICT Groups

In this paper we use the subset of ICT companies from the European R&D Investment Scoreboard to test the effect of change in the shareholders structure on the business orientation towards R&D. A change in one of the control participation for the business group is associated with a deepening of the R&D orientation. The effect is twice as large if the shareholder is a public institution or a risk-oriented financial institution. In the estimation, we address the role of heterogeneity by allowing for fat tails and asymmetry.