Unanticipated consequences: concerns about the sale of taxpayer-funded technologies to foreign entities

Albert Link and Christopher A. Swann

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2024, vol. 33, issue 6, 853-865

Abstract: An unanticipated consequence from the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is the propensity of U.S. firms to sell their SBIR-funded and developed technology rights to foreign entities. While such sales are factually documented in reports from both the U.S. National Academies and from the Department of Defense, the U.S. Congress has only recently shown concern about such activity. Using project-level data, we document the extent of foreign sales of technology rights. We also highlight the role of foreign development funding during the commercialization phase. Our statistical analysis finds a positive association between the probability of selling technology rights to foreign firms or investors and the receipt of foreign development funding. This finding might be a bellwether to the U.S. Congress and to other countries that have adopted programs that mirror the U.S. program.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10438599.2023.2258065 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:ecinnt:v:33:y:2024:i:6:p:853-865

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GEIN20

DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2023.2258065

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Innovation and New Technology is currently edited by Professor Cristiano Antonelli

More articles in Economics of Innovation and New Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().