We study how expanding access to intellectual property (IP)-backed credit affects firm innovation and aggregate total factor productivity (TFP). Exploiting China's IP-backed financing pilot as a quasi-natural experiment, we use difference-indifferences estimates to show that the policy increases R&D participation, raises firm-level productivity, and reduces capital misallocation. To interpret these effects and quantify their aggregate implications, we develop a dynamic model of heterogeneous firms that borrow subject to collateral constraints backed by tangible assets and IP, and choose R&D investment and the accumulation of wealth. R&D raises future productivity and creates collateralizable IP. We estimate the model by the method of simulated moments, using the policy-induced shift in R&D participation to identify the change in IP pledgeability. The estimated model implies that a nationwide adoption of IP-backed financing would raise long-run TFP by 14%, with roughly two-thirds coming from static gains due to improved capital allocation and the remainder from dynamic gains driven by higher innovation that accumulate over time. Relative to a comparable expansion of lending backed by tangible collateral, IP-backed financing delivers larger productivity gains by easing constraints for high-productivity but low-wealth firms and by strengthening incentives to accumulate IP as collateral for future borrowing.
展开