Large Scale Research Infrastructures and Innovation : A Survival Analysis on Cern Data

This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of large-scale research infrastructures on innovation. We exploit data on public procurement to study the innovation output resulting from the collaboration between CERN– the European Organization for Nuclear Research – and its industrial partners. We assess the impact of CERN on firms’ hazard to file a patent for the first time and the timing of this effect. Estimation of survival models highlights that being an industrial partner of CERN is associated with an increase in the hazard to patent. This effect arises with a lag of three to seven years from the beginning of the collaboration, pointing to a relatively slow process of absorption of new ideas