Heterogeneity in industry–university R&D collaboration and firm innovative performance

Scientometrics - University–industry R&;amp;D collaboration is a key driver of participating firms’ technological capability. However, there is still debate on the determinants of a...     

Academic research resources and academic quality: a cross-country analysis

Does devoting more academic research resources promote academic quality? This study aims to examine the influence of higher education R&D expenditure (HERD) on academic quality measured by the relative citation impact (RCI). Both the ordered Probit and panel data models are employed to implement the empirical estimation, the cross-country evidence suggests that an increase in academic R&D is positively related to academic quality. The further analyses on different academic disciplines show the HERD is more relevant to science publications. This finding is robust for various specifications.     

Produce patents or journal articles? A cross-country comparison of R&D productivity change

This paper compares R&D productivity change across countries considering the fact that national R&D expenditure may produce multiple outputs, including patents and journal articles. Based on the concept of directional distance function and Luenberger productivity index, this paper develops a Luenberger R&D productivity change (LRC) index and then decomposes it into R&D efficiency change (catch-up effect) and R&D technical change (innovation effect). Utilizing a panel dataset of 29 countries over the 1998–2005 period to implement the empirical estimation, the results show that the R&D productivity growth is mainly attributed to the innovation effect; meanwhile, non-OECD countries have better performance on both efficiency change and technical change than their OECD counterparts. Moreover, patent-oriented R&D productivity growth serves as the main source of national R&D productivity growth than the journal article-oriented one.     

Do R&D Spinoffs have Higher R&D Productivity? Evidence from Taiwanese Electronics Firms

The startup mode of spinoffs founded by R&D employees (R&D spinoffs) within the same industry is widespread in high-tech industries. The founders usually own specific human capital and key technological capability, enabling them to take the operational risk and to appropriate rewards of innovations under the industrial environment of rapid technological change. Whether high-tech R&D spinoffs, compared to their other spinoff counterparts, have better R&D productivity remains less well explored. According to the conceptual discussion of the advantages of intangible innovation assets embodied in company founders, this study argues that the founders' innovation cognition, knowledge externalities, absorptive capability and routine experience can help R&D spinoffs to have higher R&D productivity. We thus propose three hypotheses that are then empirically tested. Based on a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms, the empirical findings show that R&D spinoffs invest with a higher R&D intensity and on average have more patents issued. More importantly, the microeconometric estimates show that the patent and output elasticities of the R&D of R&D spinoffs are significantly higher than those of other firms, indicating that they actually have higher R&D productivity.