We present evidence on the relative efficiency of U.K. university technology transfer offices (TTOs) using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier estimation (SFE). We find that U.K. TTOs exhibit low levels of absolute efficiency. Universities located in regions with higher levels of R&D and GDP appear to be more efficient in technology transfer, implying that there may be regio...

We present quantitative and qualitative evidence on the relative productivity of university technology transfer offices (TTOs). Our empirical results suggest that TTO activity is characterized by constant returns to scale and that environmental and institutional factors explain some of the variation in performance. Productivity may also depend on organizational practices. Unfortunately, there a...

Innovating in downturns can affect corporate success because it improves a firm’s position relative to competitors during the recovery period. However, increased uncertainty and more binding financial constraints complicate such innovation activity. I find that past experience with innovation during recessions improves a firm’s ability to invest in R&D when a new downturn hits. This result hold...

The Wider Economic Impacts of High-Skilled Migrants: A Survey of the Literature In recent years, the economics of migration literature has shown a substantial growth in papers exploring host country impacts beyond the labour market. Specifically, researchers have begun to shift their attention from labour market and fiscal changes, towards exploring what we might call ‘the wider effects of migr...

This paper builds a two-country, two-sector (polluting, nonpolluting) trade model with directed technical change, examining whether unilateral environmental policies can ensure sustainable growth. The polluting good generates more or less emissions depending on its relative use of a clean and a dirty input. I show that a unilateral policy combining clean research subsidies and a trade tax can e...

This paper develops a dynamic model of innovation and international trade in which agents can direct their research efforts to specific goods the economy. Trade affects direction through its impact on expected market size for an invention, leading two-way relationship between technology absent standard quantitative Ricardian models. Following theory-consistent strategy estimate extent endogenou...

A policy debate continues about the relative merits and and negative consequences of federal policies that encourage patent protection to university research results. Given the importance of university research for innovation in many industries, the effects of such policies are of critical importance to firms. This paper examines the impact of the increase in university patenting on the effecti...

This paper examines how the relationship between firm value and patent-based indicators of inventive activity has changed over time. We use data from more than 33,000 mergers and acquisitions deals between 1985 and 2007, and distinguish between American (USPTO) and European (EPO) patents. Our results indicate that over time EPO patents have become the dominant indicator of innovative activity, ...

Does greater equity ownership by institutional investors improve or inhibit innovation incentives? We present a model of career concerns where institutional ownership increases the incentives managers have to innovate through reducing informational asymmetries. We then utilize an original panel of US firms containing information on ownership, governance, managerial characteristics and innovatio...

Firm organization is affected by structural characteristics of the firm’s environment such as competition. However, successful informal delegation to a manager by a CEO will depend on the ability to sustain co-operation in a repeated game: the co-operative equilibrium will be more easily sustained if the parties have greater trust. To explore this hypothesis we use an innovative survey tool to ...