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What is the causal effect of R&D on patenting activity in a “professor’s privilege” country? Evidence from Sweden

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Author

Summary, in English

We investigate the responsiveness of academic patenting to research and development (R&D) at the subject level at Swedish universities in panel data regressions. The general responsiveness to R&D is found to be higher than corresponding estimates in US studies, especially when we adopt instrumental variable techniques that address endogeneity in the R&D-to-patent relationship studied. We also find that this responsiveness is not associated with a lower quality of patents measured in terms of citations. A higher responsiveness from R&D to patenting is found in the fields of chemical engineering, chemistry (science), electrical engineering, electronics, and photonics, information technology, medicine, and microbiology than in other patenting fields. Our main result, that academia in Sweden contributes well to inventive activity, supports the view that the professor’s privilege—that university researchers themselves have ownership to their inventions—may be a contributing factor.

Publishing year

2016-10

Language

English

Pages

677-694

Publication/Series

Small Business Economics

Volume

47

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Economic Geography

Keywords

  • Academia
  • Knowledge production functions
  • Patenting
  • Professor’s privilege
  • Research and development
  • Sweden

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0921-898X