How does the management of research impact the disclosure of knowledge? Evidence from scientific publications and patenting behavior

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of control rights over whether to publish or patent research results. University researchers have substantial discretion over disclosure, while management in non-academic organizations often direct researchers to patent their findings. Thus, the effect of control rights can be identified by using the shift from basic to commercializable knowledge because management has a larger incentive to protect the commercializable knowledge. The effect, however, may be confounded by the heterogeneity of research paths and the organizational factors other than the allocation of decision rights. To overcome these issues, this paper exploits multiple discoveries associated with a single human gene as a research path and a discovery of a gene's linkage to a disease that may spark commercially oriented research on that gene. To isolate the effect of decision rights, multiple types of non-academic organizations are also used. Building on this variation of knowledge along research paths, the differences-in-differences estimate shows that non-academic research organizations become less likely to publish and more likely to patent than universities in the advance of commercializable knowledge.