We need to talk – or do we? Geographic distance and the commercialization of technologies from public research

Guido Buenstorf and Alexander Schacht

Research Policy, 2013, vol. 42, issue 2, 465-480

Abstract: Using a new dataset with detailed geographic information about licensing activities of the German Max Planck Society, we analyze how the probability and magnitude of commercial success are affected by geographic distance between licensors and licensees. Our evidence suggests that proximity does not generally lead to superior commercialization outcomes. A significantly negative association between distance and commercialization success is identified only for foreign licensees within the subsample of inventions licensed to more than one firm. Positive associations between distance and performance indicators are not robust to controlling for invention quality or selection into licensing.

Keywords: Academic inventions; Licensing; Spin-off entrepreneurship; Geographic distance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L24 L26 O34 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004873331200159X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: We need to talk - or do we? Geographic distance and the commercialization of technologies from public research (2012)
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:eee:respol:v:42:y:2013:i:2:p:465-480

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2012.06.010

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().