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How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of US Colleges

Michael Andrews

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2023, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-41

Abstract: I use narrative historical data on site selection decisions for a subset of US colleges to identify runner-up locations that were strongly considered to become the sites of new colleges. Using runner-up counties as counterfactuals in a difference-in-difference model, I find that establishing a college causes 62 percent more patents per year. Linking patents to novel college yearbook data reveals that only 12 percent of patents in a college's county came from that college's alumni or faculty. I find only small differences in patenting between establishing colleges and establishing other institutions as well as between colleges with different focuses on technical fields.

JEL-codes: I23 N31 N32 N71 N72 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1257/pol.20200320

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