Economies of scale and scope of university research and technology transfer: a flexible multi-product approach

Néstor Duch-Brown (), Martí Parellada-Sabata () and Jose Polo ()
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Néstor Duch-Brown: University of Barcelona & IEB
Martí Parellada-Sabata: University of Barcelona & IEB
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Néstor Duch Brown

No 2010/51, Working Papers from Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB)

Abstract: This paper empirically analyzes economies of scale and of scope in the production of research and technology transfer outputs in the Spanish public university system. We employ the flexible fixed cost quadratic function which relates total university R&D expenditure and the budget of the technology transfer offices with different outputs of research and technology transfer, from which we then compute the ray economies of scale, the specific economies of scale and the economies of scope. Our results indicate that ray economies of scale and research specific economies of scale hold up to 100% of current mean expenditure. The technology transfer product specific economies of scale hold up to 150% of current mean of the R&D expenditure. Our results also show that cost subadditivity acts a positive constraint, from which we infer the presence of economies of scope.

Keywords: Multi-product cost function; economies of scale and scope; research and technology transfer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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