We examine whether proprietary costs drive R&D-active firms’ choice of private loan structure. We find that R&D-active firms are more likely to choose single-lender over multi-lender private loan financing. This is consistent with the theory that high-ability entrepreneurs protect their proprietary knowledge by communicating it to a single lender while disclosing generic and less sensitive information to the public. This propensity, however, significantly decreases after the enactment of the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA), which accelerated public disclosure of firms’ patent details in filings with the US Patent and Trademark Office. This accelerated public disclosure potentially caused R&D information to spill over to rivals, increasing the proprietary costs of single-lender borrowers. AIPA enactment also increased the spread on R&D-active firms’ single-lender loans. These findings contribute to the voluntary disclosure and financing-choice literature by linking R&D-active firms’ choice of single-lender financing to the proprietary costs of public disclosure.

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专有成本：为什么研发活跃的公司选择单一贷款人融资？

我们研究了专有成本是否会推动积极研发的公司选择私人贷款结构。我们发现，研发活跃的公司更有可能选择单一贷款人而不是多贷款人私人贷款融资。这与高能力企业家通过将其传达给单个贷方同时向公众披露通用和不太敏感的信息来保护其专有知识的理论是一致的。然而，在美国发明人保护法 (AIPA) 颁布后，这种倾向显着降低，该法加速了公司在向美国专利商标局提交的申请中公开披露专利细节。这种加速公开披露可能导致研发信息溢出到竞争对手，增加单一贷款人借款人的专有成本。AIPA 的颁布还增加了研发活跃公司的单一贷款人贷款的利差。这些发现通过将活跃研发的公司对单一贷款人融资的选择与公开披露的专有成本联系起来，为自愿披露和融资选择文献做出了贡献。