Ownership Structure and R&D: an Empirical Analysis of Russian Listed Companies

This study is exploring the interrelationship between research and development (R&D) outlays and ownership structure of the firms in the Russian public companies. There are multiple works that examine the way corporate governance impacts innovation in firms, and especially a link between structures of ownership and innovations. Basing on sample of 1009 company-year observations over the period 2011-2016, we analyze the connection between R&D expenses and ownership structure evaluating panel data models. We examine the variety of corporate governance indicators, such as a concentration of the ownership, ownership by members of the board, and, additionally, institutional investors. Our findings unveil a negative dependence of R&D expenses and ownership by the board members. We also detect a positive relation between R&D investments and institutional investors. Above all we found the ownership by the government to be the strongest influence towards R&D expenses. Foreign investors also have a significant but small impact on R&D investments of the company. Ownership structure was not found to be significant on our data. Keywords: ownership structure, research and development, corporate governance, innovations.