Control of the Research Agenda in University-Industry Partnerships

Jill McCluskey

A chapter in Modern Agricultural and Resource Economics and Policy, 2022, pp 299-309 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The issue of who controls the topics on which university faculty conduct research is key to the value of public-private research partnerships to society. There is a continuum of control of the research agenda. At one extreme, the individual researcher has complete control over her own research agenda, which is researcher preference driven or curiosity driven. At the other extreme is pure-industry-driven research or consulting. The disadvantage of pure researcher preference-driven research is that they may end up working on projects that have little immediate economic value. At the other end of the spectrum, firms can direct scientists to work on those projects that have the highest economic payoffs. A concern is that private firms are motivated by profits rather than the public good. When they exercise too much control of the research agenda, the research focus may be too narrow. This chapter proposes an economic model that evaluates the socially optimal distribution of researchers across topics and how different types of university-industry partnerships affect control of the research agenda and the implications for society.

Keywords: O32; Q16; University researchers; Private research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nrmchp:978-3-030-77760-9_13

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-77760-9_13

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