TY  - JOUR
AU  - Damsgaard,Erika Farnstrand
AU  - Thursby,Marie C.
TI  - University Entrepreneurship and Professor Privilege
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17980
PY  - 2012
Y2  - April 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17980
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17980.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Erika Farnstrand Damsgaard
Research Institute of Industrial Economics
Box 55665
SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden 
E-Mail: erika.farnstrand.damsgaard@ifn.se

Marie C. Thursby
College of Management
Georgia Institute of Technology
800 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30308-1149
Tel: 404/894-6249
Fax: 404/385-4894
E-Mail: marie.thursby@mgt.gatech.edu
AB  - This paper analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes; the US and Sweden. In the US, the Bayh Dole Act gives universities the right to own inventions from publicly funded research, whereas in Sweden, the professor privilege gives the university faculty this right. We develop a theoretical model and examine the effects of institutional differences on modes of commercialization; entrepreneurship or licenses to established firms, as well as on probabilities of successful commercialization. We find that the US system is less conducive to entrepreneurship than the Swedish system if established firms have some advantage over faculty startups, and that on average the probability of successful commercialization is somewhat higher in the US. We also use the model to perform four policy experiments as suggested by recent policy debates in both countries.
ER  -