At least since Arrow (1962), economists have believed that strong property rights are necessary for firms to invest in innovation. This belief was a key principle underlying the Bayh-Dole Act, which gave universities the right to own and license federally funded inventions, because the...

At least since Arrow (1962), the effects of appropriability on invention have been well studied, but there has been little analysis of the effect of appropriability on the commercialization of existing inventions. Exploiting a database of 805 attempts by private firms to commercialize inventions...

At least since Arrow (1962), the effects of appropriability on invention have been well studied, but there has been little analysis of the effect of appropriability on the commercialization of existing inventions. Exploiting a database of 805 attempts by private firms to commercialize inventions...

We provide theoretical and empirical evidence on the factors that influence the willingness of academic scientists to share research results. We distinguish between two types of sharing, specific sharing in which a researcher shares her data or materials with another and general sharing in which...

We construct a dynamic model of university research that allows us to examine recent concerns that financial incentives associated with university patent licensing are detrimental to the traditional mission of US research universities. We assume a principal-agent framework in which the...

This paper examines the empirical anomaly that in a sample of 5811 patents on which US faculty are listed as inventors, 26% of the patents are assigned solely to firms rather than to the faculty member's university as is dictated by US university employment policies or the Bayh Dole Act. In this...