Intellectual Capital and the Birth of U.S. Biotechnology Enterprises

Lynne Zucker (), Michael Darby () and Marilynn B. Brewer

No 4653, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine the relationship between the intellectual capital of scientists making frontier discoveries, the presence of great university bioscience programs, the presence of venture capital firms, other economic variables, and the founding of U.S. biotechnology enterprises during 1976-1989. Using a linked cross-section/time- series panel data set, we find that the timing and location of the birth of biotech enterprises is determined primarily by intellectual capital measures, particularly the local number of highly productive 'star' scientists actively publishing genetic sequence discoveries. Great universities are likely to grow and recruit star scientists, but their effect is separable from the universities. When the intellectual capital measures are included in our poisson regressions, the number of venture capital firms in an area reduces the probability of foundings. At least early in the process, star scientists appear to be the scarce, immobile factors of production. Our focus on intellectual capital is related to knowledge spillovers, but in this case 'natural excludability' permits capture of supranormal returns by scientists. Given this reward structure technology transfer was vigorous without any special intermediating structures. We believe biotechnology may be prototypical of the birth patterns in other innovative industries.

JEL-codes: L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-02
Note: PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Published as American Economic Review, vol. 88, no. 1, March 1998. pp. 290-306

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w4653.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:4653

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w4653

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().