In this paper we analyse the effect of ownership on the response of firms’ R&D expenditures to the business cycle, using a panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1990–2006. Following Aghion et al. (2012, Journal of the European Economic Association), we allow the impact of the business cycle on firms’ R&D expenditures to depend upon credit constraints, but we extend their analysis by considering the moderating effect of different firms’ ownership types. We find that firms’ R&D spending is countercyclical but that credit constraints may reverse this counter cyclicality, in line with previous results in the literature. However, our findings indicate that these results are moderated by firms’ ownership. In particular, in the case of firms that are family owned and firms that are group affiliated, the responsiveness of R&D to the business cycle is considerably less dependent on being credit constrained, especially during recessions.