We aim to tackle the longstanding debate on whether stock liquidity enhances or impedes firm innovation in this paper. This topic is of particular interest to firm stakeholders and regulators, because innovation is crucial for firm and national level competitiveness and stock liquidity can be...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism impacts corporate innovation. Firms targeted by activists improve their innovation efficiency over the five-year period following hedge fund intervention. Despite a tightening in R&D expenditures, target firms increase innovation output, as measured by...