TY  - JOUR
AU  - Azoulay,Pierre
AU  - Ding,Waverly
AU  - Stuart,Toby
TI  - The Determinants of Faculty Patenting Behavior: Demographics or Opportunities?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11348
PY  - 2005
Y2  - May 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11348
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11348.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Pierre Azoulay
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, E62-482
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617/258-9766
Fax: 617/253-2660
E-Mail: pazoulay@mit.edu

Waverly Ding
Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA  94720-1900
E-Mail: wding@haas.berkeley.edu

Toby Stuart
University of California – Berkeley
Haas School of Business
2220 Piedmont Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94720
E-Mail: tstuart@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - We examine the individual, contextual, and institutional determinants of faculty patenting behavior in a panel dataset spanning the careers of 3,884 academic life scientists. Using a combination of discrete time hazard rate models and fixed effects logistic models, we find that patenting events are preceded by a flurry of publications, even holding constant time-invariant scientific talent and the latent patentability of a scientist's research. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect of this flurry is influenced by context --- such as the presence of coauthors who patent and the patent stock of the scientist's university. Whereas previous research emphasized that academic patenters are more accomplished on average than their non-patenting counterparts, our findings suggest that patenting behavior is also a function of scientific opportunities. This result has important implications for the public policy debate surrounding academic patenting.
ER  -