Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6120
Authors: Sharon Belenzon; Mark Schankerman
Abstract: We study the impact of incentive pay, local development objectives and government constraints on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new survey information together with panel data on U.S. universities for 1995-99. We find that private universities are much more likely to adopt incentive pay than public ones, but ownership does not affect licensing performance conditional on the use of incentive pay. Adopting incentive pay is associated with about 30-40 percent more income per license. Universities with strong local development objectives generate about 30 percent less income per license, but are more likely to license to local (in-state) startup companies. Stronger government constraints are ?costly? in terms of foregone license income and startup activity. These results are robust to controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity.
Keywords: Incentives; Licensing; Local Development; Performance Pay; Technology Transfer; Universities
JEL Codes: F23; O31; O32; O33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Incentive pay (J33) | licensing income (D45) |
| Local development objectives (R58) | licensing income (D45) |
| Government constraints (H60) | licensing income (D45) |
| Ownership (H13) | licensing performance (D45) |