The Effect of University Science on Corporate Innovation

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05723

References

  • Adão R, Kolesár M, Morales E (2019) Shift-share designs: Theory and inference. Quart. J. Econom. 134(4):1949–2010.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Alcácer J, Gittelman M, Sampat B (2009) Applicant and examiner citations in U.S. patents: An overview and analysis. Res. Policy 38(2):415–427.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (2021) Historical trends in federal R&D. Accessed December 6, 2021, https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd.Google Scholar
  • Anckaert PE (2025) When the drugs (don’t) work: The role of science in product commercialization. Res. Policy 54(5):105237.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Angrist JD, Pischke JS (2009) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Arora A, Belenzon S (2023) The changing structure of American innovation. NBER Rep. (March 31), https://www.nber.org/reporter/2023number1/changing-structure-american-innovation.Google Scholar
  • Arora A, Belenzon S, Patacconi A (2018) The decline of science in corporate R&D. Strategic Management J. 39(1):3–32.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Arora A, Belenzon S, Sheer L (2021a) Knowledge spillovers and corporate investment in scientific research. Amer. Econom. Rev. 111(3):871–898.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Arora A, Belenzon S, Sheer L (2021b) Matching patents to Compustat firms, 1980-2015: Dynamic reassignment, name changes, and ownership structures. Res. Policy 50(5):104217.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Arora A, Fosfuri A, Gambardella A (2001) Markets for technology and their implications for corporate strategy. Indust. Corp. Change 10(2):419–451.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Azoulay P, Graff Zivin JS, Li D, Sampat BN (2019) Public R&D investments and private-sector patenting: Evidence from NIH funding rules. Rev. Econom. Stud. 86(1):117–152.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Babina T, He AX, Howell ST, Perlman ER, Staudt J (2023) Cutting the innovation engine: How federal funding shocks affect university patenting, entrepreneurship, and publications. Quart. J. Econom. 138(2):895–954.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bedard K, Herman DA (2008) Who goes to graduate/professional school? The importance of economic fluctuations, undergraduate field, and ability. Econom. Ed. Rev. 27(2):197–210.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Beise M, Stahl H (1999) Public research and industrial innovations in Germany. Res. Policy 28(4):397–422.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Belenzon S, Cioaca L (2025) Guaranteed demand and corporate R&D. Management Sci. 72(4):2681–2787.Google Scholar
  • Belenzon S, Schankerman M (2013) Spreading the word: Geography, policy, and knowledge spillovers. Rev. Econom. Statist. 95(3):884–903.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Chen J, Roth J (2023) Logs with zeros? Some problems and solutions. Quart. J. Econom. 139(2):891–936.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Cockburn IM, Henderson RM (1998) Absorptive capacity, coauthoring behavior, and the organization of research in drug discovery. J. Indust. Econom. 46(2):157–182.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Cohan A, Feldman S, Beltagy I, Downey D, Weld DS (2020) SPECTER: Document-level representation learning using citation-informed transformers. Proc. 58th Annual Meeting Assoc. Comput. Linguistics (Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg, PA), 2270–2282.Google Scholar
  • Cohen WM, Levinthal DA (1990) Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Admin. Sci. Quart. 35(1):128–152.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Cohen WM, Nelson RR, Walsh JP (2000) Protecting their intellectual assets: Appropriability conditions and why US manufacturing firms patent (or not). NBER Working Paper No. 7552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
  • Cohen WM, Nelson RR, Walsh JP (2002) Links and impacts: The influence of public research on industrial R&D. Management Sci. 48(1):1–23.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • David PA, Hall BH, Toole AA (2000) Is public R&D a complement or substitute for private R&D? A review of the econometric evidence. Res. Policy 29(4–5):497–529.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Davis OA, Dempster MAH, Wildavsky A (1966) A theory of the budgetary process. Amer. Political Sci. Rev. 60(3):529–547.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Davis JA, Venkatesan R, Kaloyeros A, Beylansky M, Souri SJ, Banerjee K (2001) Interconnect limits on gigascale integration (GSI) in the 21st century. Proc. IEEE 89(3):305–324.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Digital Science (2022) The data in Dimensions. Retrieved April 12, https://www.dimensions.ai/dimensions-data/.Google Scholar
  • Dimos C, Pugh G (2016) The effectiveness of R&D subsidies: A meta-regression analysis of the evaluation literature. Res. Policy 45(4):797–815.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Einiö E (2014) R&D subsidies and company performance: Evidence from geographic variation in government funding based on the ERDF population-density rule. Rev. Econom. Statist. 96(4):710–728.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Epp DA, Lovett J, Baumgartner FR (2014) Partisan priorities and public budgeting. Political Res. Quart. 67(4):864–878.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Fleming L, Greene H, Li G, Marx M, Yao D (2019) Government-funded research increasingly fuels innovation. Science 364(6446):1139–1141.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Frølund L, Murray F, Riedel M (2018) Developing successful strategic partnerships with universities. MIT Sloan Management Rev. 60(2):71–79.Google Scholar
  • Goldsmith-Pinkham P, Sorkin I, Swift H (2020) Bartik instruments: What, when, why, and how. Amer. Econom. Rev. 110(8):2586–2624.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • González X, Jaumandreu J, Pazó C (2005) Barriers to innovation and subsidy effectiveness. RAND J. Econom. 36(4):930–950.Google Scholar
  • Goolsbee A (1998) Does government R&D policy mainly benefit scientists and engineers? Amer. Econom. Rev. 88(2):298–302.Google Scholar
  • Hall BH, Jaffe A, Trajtenberg M (2005) Market value and patent citations. RAND J. Econom. 36(1):16–38.Google Scholar
  • Hartmann P, Henkel J (2020) The rise of corporate science in AI: Data as a strategic resource. Acad. Management Discoveries 6(3):359–381.Google Scholar
  • Hausman N (2022) University innovation and local economic growth. Rev. Econom. Statist. 104(4):718–735.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Jaffe AB, Trajtenberg M, Henderson R (1993) Geographic localization of knowledge spillovers as evidenced by patent citations. Quart. J. Econom. 108(3):577–598.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Jones CI (2022) The past and future of economic growth: A semi-endogenous perspective. Annual Rev. Econom. 14:125–152.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kerr WR (2008) Ethnic scientific communities and international technology diffusion. Rev. Econom. Statist. 90(3):518–537.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kim SD, Moser P (2025) Women in science. Lessons from the baby boom. Econometrica. 93(5):1521–1560.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Klevorick AK, Levin RC, Nelson RR, Winter SG (1995) On the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities. Res. Policy 24(2):185–205.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kogan L, Papanikolaou D, Seru A, Stoffman N (2017) Technological innovation, resource allocation, and growth. Quart. J. Econom. 132(2):665–712.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Laursen K, Salter A (2004) Searching high and low: What types of firms use universities as a source of innovation? Res. Policy 33(8):1201–1215.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lee H, Marx M, Sheer L (2025) The share of science-based startups in venture capital is shrinking. Working paper, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
  • Lichtenberg FR (1984) The relationship between federal contract R&D and company R&D. Amer. Econom. Rev. 74(2):73–78.Google Scholar
  • Lin W, Wooldridge JM (2019) Testing and correcting for endogeneity in nonlinear unobserved effects models. Tsionas M, ed. Panel Data Econometrics (Academic Press, London), 21–43.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mamuneas TP, Nadiri MI (1996) Public R&D policies and cost behavior of the US manufacturing industries. J. Public Econom. 63(1):57–81.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mansfield E (1995) Academic research underlying industrial innovations: Sources, characteristics, and financing. Rev. Econom. Statist. 77(1):55–65.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mansfield E (1998) Academic research and industrial innovation: An update of empirical findings. Res. Policy 26(7–8):773–776.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Marx M, Fuegi A (2022) Reliance on science by inventors: Hybrid extraction of in-text patent-to-article citations. J. Econom. Management Strategy 31(2):369–392.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Masclans R, Hasan S, Cohen WM (2025) Measuring the commercial potential of science. Strategic Management J. 46(9):2199–2236.Google Scholar
  • McMillan GS, Narin F, Deeds DL (2000) An analysis of the critical role of public science in innovation: The case of biotechnology. Res. Policy 29(1):1–8.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Moretti E, Steinwender C, Van Reenen J (2025) The intellectual spoils of war? Defense R&D, productivity, and international spillovers. Rev. Econom. Statist. 107(1):14–27.Google Scholar
  • Mowery DC (2009) Plus ca change: Industrial R&D in the “third industrial revolution". Indust. Corporate Change 18(1):1–50.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mullahy J, Norton EC (2022) Why transform y? A critical assessment of dependent-variable transformations in regression models for skewed and sometimes-zero outcomes. NBER Working Paper No. 30735, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
  • Mulligan K, Lenihan H, Doran J, Roper S (2022) Harnessing the science base: Results from a national programme using publicly-funded research centres to reshape firms’ R&D. Res. Policy 51(4):104468.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Munari F, Righi H, Sobrero M, Toschi L, Leonardelli E, Mainini S, Tonelli S (2022) Assessing the influence of ERC-funded research on patented inventions. Report, European Research Council, Brussels.Google Scholar
  • Murata Y, Nakajima R, Okamoto R, Tamura R (2014) Localized knowledge spillovers and patent citations: A distance-based approach. Rev. Econom. Statist. 96(5):967–985.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Myers KR, Lanahan L (2022) Estimating spillovers from publicly funded R&D: Evidence from the US Department of Energy. Amer. Econom. Rev. 112(7):2393–2423.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Narin F, Hamilton KS, Olivastro D (1997) The increasing linkage between US technology and public science. Res. Policy 26(3):317–330.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2023a) National patterns of R&D resources: 2020–21 data update. Technical Report NSF 23-321, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA.Google Scholar
  • National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (2023b) Science and engineering indicators 2022. Technical report, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA.Google Scholar
  • National Science Board (1998) Science and engineering indicators 1998. Technical Report NSB-1998-1, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA.Google Scholar
  • National Science Board (2010) Science and engineering indicators 2010. Technical Report NSB-2010-1, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA.Google Scholar
  • National Science Board (2018) Science and engineering indicators 2018. Technical Report NSB-2018-1, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA.Google Scholar
  • OECD (2022) OECD patent quality indicators database, February 2022 edition. Dataset, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved March 23, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/intellectual-property-statistics.html.Google Scholar
  • Roche (2023) Roche launches Institute of Human Biology to accelerate breakthroughs in R&D by unlocking the potential of human model systems. Press release, Roche, Basel, Switzerland.Google Scholar
  • Romer PM (1990) Endogenous technological change. J. Political Econom. 98(5, Part 2):S71–S102.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Rosenberg N (1990) Why do firms do basic research (with their own money)? Res. Policy 19(2):165–174.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sanderson E, Windmeijer F (2016) A weak instrument–Robust test in linear IV models with multiple endogenous variables. J. Econom. 190(2):212–221.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Scandura A (2016) University-industry collaboration and firms’ R&D effort. Res. Policy 45(9):1907–1922.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sinha A, Shen Z, Song Y, Ma H, Eide D, Hsu BJ, Wang K (2015) An overview of Microsoft Academic Service (MAS) and applications. WWW’15 Companion Proc. 24th Internat. Conf. World Wide Web (Association for Computing Machinery, New York), 243–246.Google Scholar
  • Stephan P (2012) How Economics Shapes Science (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Szücs F (2020) Do research subsidies crowd out private R&D of large firms? Evidence from European framework programmes. Res. Policy 49(3):103923.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Tartari V, Stern S (2021) More than an ivory tower: The impact of research institutions on the quantity and quality of entrepreneurship. NBER Working Paper No. 28846, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
  • Tavares J (2004) Does right or left matter? Cabinets, credibility and fiscal adjustments. J. Public Econom. 88(12):2447–2468.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Tether BS, Tajar A (2008) Beyond industry–University links: Sourcing knowledge for innovation from consultants, private research organisations and the public science-base. Res. Policy 37(6–7):1079–1095.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Valero A, Van Reenen J (2019) The economic impact of universities: Evidence from across the globe. Econom. Ed. Rev. 68:53–67.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wallsten SJ (2000) The effects of government-industry R&D programs on private R&D: The case of the Small Business Innovation Research program. RAND J. Econom. 31(1):82–100.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wang K, Shen Z, Huang C, Wu CH, Eide D, Dong Y, Qian J, Kanakia A, Chen A, Rogahn R (2019) A review of Microsoft Academic Services for science of science studies. Frontiers Big Data 2:45.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wooldridge JM (2013) Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach, 5th ed. (South-Western Cengage Learning, Mason, OH).Google Scholar
  • Zucker LG, Darby MR, Brewer MB (1998) Intellectual human capital and the birth of U.S. biotechnology enterprises. Amer. Econom. Rev. 88(1):290–306.Google Scholar
INFORMS site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; Others help us improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Please read our Privacy Statement to learn more.