소유구조와 연구개발투자: 한국 벤처기업을 대상으로

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between ownership and R&D investment in Korean venture firms. Based on five-year panel data of 168 Korean venture firms listed in Kospi and Kosdaq during the period of 2011~2015, this study performed Panel regression test and Panel Tobit regression test. The statistical result shows that both managerial ownership of founders and foreign ownership have positive effect on R&D investment in Korean venture firms in terms of R&D expenditure over firms sales. This result suggests that founders, who have high risk acceptance tendency for long-term goal, are more likely to make high risk decisions such as R&D investment when they have more stock ownership. The result implies distinctive characteristics of venture firms from large-sized firms which show negative relationship after critical point because of risk averseness of managers. In addition, foreign ownership shows positive relationship with R&D investment as well, which is the result of monitoring effect of foreign investors. These positive impact is aligned with long-term investment motivation of foreign investor on venture firms which have high growth opportunities. However, managerial ownership of professional CEOs did not show statistically significant relationship with R&D investment, probably due to the lack of enough sample data to perform meaningful statistic models.