How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of US Colleges
利用美国大学选址的叙事历史数据，将亚军选址县作为反事实，发现建立大学使当地专利年增长62%，但仅12%的专利来自该校校友或教师。
I use narrative historical data on site selection decisions for a subset of US colleges to identify runner-up locations that were strongly considered to become the sites of new colleges. Using runner-up counties as counterfactuals in a difference-in-difference model, I find that establishing a college causes 62 percent more patents per year. Linking patents to novel college yearbook data reveals that only 12 percent of patents in a college’s county came from that college’s alumni or faculty. I find only small differences in patenting between establishing colleges and establishing other institutions as well as between colleges with different focuses on technical fields.