Do University Policies Make a Difference?

An examination of whether the institutional differencein universities makes a difference in facilitating spillover and thecommercialization of knowledge is conducted. Specifically, the impacts of twodifferent types of universities in Germany--general universities and technicaluniversities--are studied. Data consists of 276 initial public offering (IPO) firms in Germanycollected from IPO prospectuses and online data sources, such as theDeutsche Boerse AG.It was found that firm growth is negativelyrelated to firm size; knowledge-based firms that access spillovers fromtechnical universities do not have performance advantages over firms thataccess spillovers from general universities; and age, unlike firm size, doesplay a key role in shaping performance for firms that access knowledgespillovers from technical universities. Based on this empirical evidence, it isevident that technical universities do not provide any locational advantage tofirm performance, and thus university policy does not make a difference interms of influencing the performance of knowledge-based startups.(NEE)