Commercial Incentives in Academia

A. Banal-Estanol and Ines Macho-Stadler

Working Papers from Department of Economics, City University London

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of monetary rewards from commercialisation on the pattern of research. We build a simple repeated model of a researcher capable to obtain innovative ideas. We analyse how academic and market incentives affect the allocation of the researcher’s time between research and development. We argue, however, that technology transfer objectives also affect the choice of research projects. Although commercialisation incentives reduce the time spent in research, they might also induce researchers to conduct research that is more basic in nature, contrary to what the “skewing problem” would presage. Monetary rewards induce a more intensive search for (ex-post) path-breaking innovations, which are more likely to be generated through (ex-ante) basic research programs. These results are shown to hold even if development delays publication.

Keywords: Faculty behaviour; basic vs. applied research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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