Incentives and Invention in Universities
研究发现，美国大学给教授更强的专利许可收入激励，能增加许可收入，且激励主要提升发明质量而非数量，私立大学效果更明显。
We show that universities in the United States that provide stronger royalty incentives to faculty scientists generate greater license income, controlling for university characteristics. We use pre‐sample data on university patenting to control for the potential endogeneity of royalty shares. Faculty responds to royalties both in the form of cash and research lab support, indicating both pecuniary and intrinsic research motivations. The impact of incentives is larger in private than in public universities, and we provide new survey evidence on the organization and objectives of university licensing offices to explain this difference. Royalty incentives work both by raising faculty effort and sorting scientists across universities. The primary impact of incentives is to increase the quality rather than the quantity of inventions.