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1 UNIVERSITY REPUTATION AND THE DISCLOSURE OF ACADEMIC DISCOVERIES: EVIDENCE FROM NANO-SCALE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY* (2012)
BibTeX
@MISC{Stuen121university,
author = {Eric Stuen and Jeongsik Lee},
title = {1 UNIVERSITY REPUTATION AND THE DISCLOSURE OF ACADEMIC DISCOVERIES: EVIDENCE FROM NANO-SCALE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY*},
year = {2012}
}
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Abstract
We study how the technology transfer policies and scientific reputations of universities affect the decisions of researchers of whether to commercially develop their discoveries, and if so, whether to do so through disclosure to their universities. Several recent studies have documented that up to one third of patents by faculty at US universities are solely assigned to firms, suggesting a considerable scope for non-disclosure, or “circumvention. ” We develop a model that extends a principal-agent framework of the commercialization decision to consider the strategic option of circumvention. The model predicts a positive effect of university reputation, and a negative effect of researcher reputation on disclosure. We test these predictions with data on over 33,000 researchers in nanosciences. We find that university reputation is positively associated with disclosure and that this positive effect is stronger for higher-reputation researchers. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of university technology transfer, faculty recruitment and, more generally, public research. (Keywords: disclosure; circumvention; technology transfer; nanoscience; commercialization)
Keyphrases
nano-scale science technology university reputation disclosure academic discovery positive effect university reputation public research higher-reputation researcher scientific reputation commercialization decision u university strategic option negative effect researcher reputation principal-agent framework university technology transfer several recent study technology transfer policy faculty recruitment technology transfer considerable scope
