We investigate how university governance affects research output, measured by patenting and international university research rankings. For both European and U.S. universities, we generate several measures of autonomy, governance, and competition for research funding. We show that university...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of technological adoption in an economy populated by 'satisficing' entrepreneurs whose main objective is to minimise innovative effort while keeping the firm alive. In such an economy, product market competition is shown to have a stimulating...

We develop a model that clarifies the respective advantages and disadvantages of academic and private-sector research. Our model assumes full protection of intellectual property rights at all stages of the development process, and hence does not rely on lack of appropriability or spillovers to...

This paper develops an agency model in which firms can influence their own incentives to provide a non-contractible effort by contracting on other variables (e.g. by committing themselves to some verifiable investment). In such a model the firms' need for outside finance is shown to interact...

Scientific freedom and openness are hallmarks of academia: relative to their counterparts in industry, academics maintain discretion over their research agenda and allow others to build on their discoveries. This paper examines the relationship between openness and freedom, building on recent...

In this paper, we introduce the notion of transferable control, defined as a situation where one party (the principal, say) can transfer control to another party (the agent) but cannot commit herself to do so. One theoretical foundation for this notion builds on the distinction between formal...

It has been emphasized that when contracts are incomplete (e.g., because some relevant variables are not verifiable by outsiders), the possibility of contract negotiation may prevent achieving desirable allocations that could be implemented otherwise. The authors analyze a situation where...