TY  - JOUR
AU  - Azoulay,Pierre
AU  - Ding,Waverly
AU  - Stuart,Toby
TI  - The Impact of Academic Patenting on the Rate, Quality, and Direction of (Public) Research Output
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11917
PY  - 2006
Y2  - January 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11917
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11917.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 influence of faculty patenting activity on the rate, quality, and content of public research outputs in a panel dataset spanning the careers of 3,862 academic life scientists. Using inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTW) to account for the dynamics of self-selection into patenting, we find that patenting has a positive effect on the rate of publication of journal articles, but no effect on the quality of these publications. Using several measures of the "patentability" of the content of research papers, we also find that patenters may be shifting their research focus to questions of commercial interest. We conclude that the often-voiced concern that patenting in academe has a nefarious effect on public research output is, at least in its simplest form, misplaced.
ER  -