Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules

Pierre Azoulay, Joshua Graff Zivin, Danielle Li and Bhaven Sampat

No 20889, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We quantify the impact of scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on patenting by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Our paper makes two contributions. First, we use newly constructed bibliometric data to develop a method for flexibly linking specific grant expenditures to private-sector innovations. Second, we take advantage of idiosyncratic rigidities in the rules governing NIH peer review to generate exogenous variation in funding across research areas. Our results show that NIH funding spurs the development of private-sector patents: a $10 million boost in NIH funding leads to a net increase of 2.3 patents. Though valuing patents is difficult, we report a range of estimates for the private value of these patents using different approaches.

JEL-codes: O3 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
Note: EH PE PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published as Pierre Azoulay & Joshua S Graff Zivin & Danielle Li & Bhaven N Sampat, 2019. "Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, vol 86(1), pages 117-152.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20889.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20889

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w20889

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().