Commercializing Science: Is There a University “Brain Drain” from Academic Entrepreneurship?
研究科学家参与商业化创业是否导致非营利研究部门的知识生产下降，利用科学家面板数据和小企业创新研究计划数据，发现人才流失对知识生产有显著影响。
When academic researchers participate in commercialization using for-profit firms, there is a potentially costly trade-off—their time and effort are diverted away from academic knowledge production. This is a form of brain drain on the not-for-profit research sector that may reduce knowledge accumulation and adversely impact long-run economic growth. In this paper, we examine the economic significance of the brain drain phenomenon using scientist-level panel data. We identify life scientists who start or join for-profit firms using information from the Small Business Innovation Research program and analyze the research performance of these scientists relative to a control group of randomly selected research peers. Combining our statistical results with data on the number of university spin-offs in the United States from 1994 to 2004, we find the academic brain drain has a nontrivial impact on knowledge production in the not-for-profit research sector.