We provide evidence that financial distress induces firms to sell their technology to foreign competitors. To do so, we construct a novel, spatial panel dataset by individually researching and locating U.S. firms who signed Technology Transfer Agreements (TTAs) with the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s in various U.S. counties. By relating the number of TTAs signed in each county to the number of bank failures, we establish a significant, positive relationship between financial distress and the number of firms signing TTAs with the Soviet Union. Our findings suggest that banking panics may create opportunities for foreign countries to acquire affected firms’ technology.

中文翻译：

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谁与苏联合作？大萧条期间的财务困境和技术转让


我们提供的证据表明，财务困境会促使公司将其技术出售给外国竞争对手。为此，我们通过单独研究和定位 1920 年代和 1930 年代在美国各个县与苏联签署技术转让协议 （TTA） 的美国公司来构建一个新的空间面板数据集。通过将每个县签署的 TTA 数量与银行倒闭的数量联系起来，我们在财务困境与与苏联签署 TTA 的公司数量之间建立了显著的正相关关系。我们的研究结果表明，银行业恐慌可能会为外国创造机会来收购受影响的公司的技术。