The Governance and Performance of Research Universities: Evidence from Europe and the U.S. / Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, Caroline M. Hoxby, Andreu Mas-Colell, André Sapir.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aghion, Philippe.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Dewatripont, Mathias.

Hoxby, Caroline M.

Mas-Colell, Andreu.

Sapir, André.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w14851.

NBER working paper series no. w14851

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

The Governance and Performance of Research Universities

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2009.

Summary:

We investigate how university governance affects research output, measured by patenting and international university research rankings. For both European and U.S. universities, we generate several measures of autonomy, governance, and competition for research funding. We show that university autonomy and competition are positively correlated with university output, both among European countries and among U.S. public universities. We then identity a (political) source of exogenous shocks to funding of U.S. universities. We demonstrate that, when a state's universities receive a positive funding shock, they produce more patents if they are more autonomous and face more competition from private research universities. Finally, we show that during periods when merit-based competitions for federal research funding have been most prominent, universities produce more patents when they receive an exogenous funding shock, suggesting that routine participation in such competitions hones research skill.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2009.