The role of research orientation for attracting competitive research funding.

This article studies the role of research orientation for attracting research grants at higher education institutions in Germany. Traditionally research activities were funded by the institutions’ core budget. More recently, extramural research funding has become increasingly important. Besides the public sector, industry provides a growing share of such funds. The results based on a sample of professors in science and engineering suggest that basic and applied research is complementarity for attracting research funding from industry. Thus, professors who conduct basic research in addition to research on the applicability of their results appear to be a more interesting target or most successful in raising industry funds. For raising grants from public sources, it turns out that specialization is more important. Specialized research units on either basic or applied research obtain significantly more public grants which points to a substitutive relationship between basic and applied research for grants from public sources.applied research; basic research; research funding; university-industry technology transfer;

Innovative capability and financing constraints for innovation: More money, more innovation?

This study presents a novel empirical approach to identify financing constraints for innovation based on the concept of an ideal test as suggested by Hall (2008). Firms were offered a hypothetical payment and were asked to choose between alternatives of use. If they selected additional innovation projects, they must have had some unexploited investment opportunities that were not profitable using more costly external finance. We attribute constraints for innovation not only to lacking financing, but also to firms' innovative capability. Econometric results show that financial constraints do not depend on the availability of internal funds per se, but that they are driven by innovative capability. --Innovation,financing constraints,innovative capability,multivariate probit models

Industry funding of university research and scientific productivity.

University research provides valuable inputs to industrial innovation. It is therefore not surprising that private sector firms increasingly seek direct access through funding public R&D. This development, however, spurred concerns about possible negative long-run effects on scientific performance. While previous research mainly focused on a potential crowding-out of scientific publications through commercialization activities such as patenting or the formation of spin-off companies, we study the effects of direct funding from industry on professors’ publication and patenting efforts. Our analysis on a sample of 678 professors at 46 higher education institutions in Germany shows that a higher share of industry funding of a professor’s research budget results in a lower publication outcome both in terms of quantity and quality in subsequent years. For patents, we find that industry funding increases their quality measured by patent citations.scientific productivity; research funding; academic patents; technology transfer;

Financing constraints for industrial innovation: What do we know?.

This article provides an overview of the most important insights from economic literature on private investment into research and development activity and how it may be constrained by market failure. The focus is on implications from empirical studies for the identification of financially constrained firms with respect to their innovative activities. The empirical evidence for incentive and financing problems for private sector investment in innovation projects has provided ground for governmental interventions to prevent welfare reducing underinvestment in innovation. However, the survey of the literature shows that designing efficient policy schemes is not straightforward as government funds are scarce, and the impact of financial constraints on investment may differ substantially across firms, types of R&D projects and the organization of financial markets in different countries.Innovation; R&D; Financial Constraints; Innovation Policy;

Industrial research versus development investment: the implications of financial constraints

Previous literature provided evidence on financing constraints for investment in R&D activities due to capital market imperfections and special features of R&D investments. Moreover, it has been shown that a shift in capital structure towards more debt, results in a reduction of R&D investments. This article complements this literature by compartmentalizing R&D activities in its components, R and D. In particular, we distinguish research from development as these activities do not only differ in their nature, but also to a large extent take place sequentially. Our results show that R investment is more sensitive to the firms' operating liquidity than D indicating that firms have to rely even more on internal funds for financing their research compared to development activities. Moreover, we find that (basic) research subsidy recipients' investment is less sensitive to internal liquidity. --Research and development,liquidity constraints,innovation policy

Industrial research versus development investment: The implications of financial constraints.

Previous literature provided evidence on financing constraints for investment in R&D activities due to capital market imperfections and special features of R&D investments. Moreover, it has been shown that a shift in capital structure towards more debt, results in a reduction of R&D investments. This article complements this literature by compartmentalizing R&D activities in its components, ‘R’ and ‘D’. In particular, we distinguish research from development as these activities do not only differ in their nature, but also to a large extent take place sequentially. Our results show that ‘R’ investment is more sensitive to the firms’ operating liquidity than ‘D’ indicating that firms have to rely even more on internal funds for financing their research compared to development activities. Moreover, we find that (basic) research subsidy recipients’ investment is less sensitive to internal liquidity.Research and Development; Liquidity Constraints; Innovation Policy;

Industry funding of university research and scientific productivity

University research provides valuable inputs to industrial innovation. It is therefore not surprising that private sector firms increasingly seek direct access through funding public R&D. This development, however, spurred concerns about possible negative long-run effects on scientific performance. While previous research has mainly focused on a potential crowding-out of scientific publications through commercialization activities such as patenting or the formation of spin-off companies, we study the effects of direct funding from industry on professors’ publication and patenting efforts. Our analysis of a sample of 678 professors at 46 higher education institutions in Germany shows that a higher share of industry funding of a professor’s research budget results in a lower publication outcome both in terms of quantity and quality in subsequent years. For patents, we find that industry funding increases their quality measured by patent citations

Innovative capability and financing constraints for innovation more money, more innovation?

This study presents a novel empirical approach to identify financing constraints for innovation based on the idea of an ideal test as suggested by Hall (2008). Firms were offered a hypothetical payment and were asked to choose between alternatives of use. If they choose additional innovation projects they must have had some unexploited investment opportunities that were not profitable using more costly external finance. That is, these firms have been financially constrained. We attribute constraints for innovation not only to lacking financing, but also to firms' innovative capability. Econometric results show that financial constraints do not depend on the availability of internal funds per se, but that they are driven by innovative capability. We find firms with high innovative capability but low financial resources to be most likely subject to financing constraints. Yet, we also observe constraints for financially sound firms that may have to put ideas on the shelf

Flying the nest: how the home department shapes researchers’ career paths

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1076782This paper studies the importance of the socialization environment – nest – for the career destinations of early career researchers. In a sample of research groups in the fields of science and engineering at universities in Germany, we identify research orientation, output, funding as well as openness to industry and commercialization as relevant components. Nests that attract more public funding and are led by professors with high research performance are more likely to produce researchers who take jobs in public research, while links to industry predict jobs in the private sector. In a more nuanced analysis that differentiates between types of industry employment, we find that larger firms also recruit from groups with higher scientific performance, while small and medium-sized firms recruit from nests with a higher patent productivity. A focus on experimental development instead is associated with academic start-ups, and an applied focus with employment in consulting. Recommendations for research training are discussed.We thank the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) for providing the survey data and Susanne Thorwarth for help with the collection of publication and patent data. We thank participants at the ‘The Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research’ workshop organised by LEI & BRICK, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Torino (Italy) and the ‘Beyond spillovers? Channels and effects of knowledge transfer from universities’ workshop at the University of Kassel (Germany) for helpful comments. Cornelia Lawson acknowledges financial support from the Collegio Carlo Alberto under Grant ‘Researcher Mobility and Scientific Performance’ and the University of Nottingham ‘International Collaboration Fund’