The impact of home and host country institutional development on multinationals’ R&D intensity Ellimäki, Pia Hurtado Torres, Nuria Esther Cordón Pozo, Eulogio R&D intensity Innovation Institutional development Home country Host countries Internationalization The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been partially funded by the research grants ECO2016-75909-P (Spanish Ministry of Science, Education, and Universities), ECO2017-88222-P and PID2019-106725GB-I00/SRA (Spanish Research Agency/10.13039/501100011033). This empirical article examines how the institutional development of the home country and host countries in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) are embedded can drive MNEs’ research and development (R&D) intensity. In doing so, this study analyzes 967 firm-year observations of 234 pharmaceutical firms from 30 developed and less developed countries in the period from 2010 to 2017. We find empirical support for internationalization toward developed countries as a driver of R&D intensity at the firm level. Furthermore, we find that this positive effect is stronger for MNEs from less institutionally developed home countries. The results can help managers, researchers, and policymakers to better understand the innovation process in R&D-intensive industries. 2022-03-07T09:02:48Z 2022-03-07T09:02:48Z 2022-02-02 journal article Ellimäki, P., Hurtado-Torres, N. E., & Cordón-Pozo, E. (2022). The impact of home and host country institutional development on multinationals’ R&D intensity. BRQ Business Research Quarterly. [https://doi.org/10.1177/23409444221076495] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/73169 10.1177/23409444221076495 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/es/ open access Atribución-NoComercial 3.0 España SAGE