Identifying the effects of technology transfer policy using a quantile regression: the case of South Korea

Abstract

The South Korean government provided policy levers for technology transfer by establishing the Technology Transfer Promotion Act in 2000. It also implemented a technology transfer promotion plan based on this law. Along with the law’s enactment, the Korean government required the establishment of technology licensing offices (TLOs) for national and public universities. Although this policy led to the quantitative expansion of TLOs, it did not result in qualitative growth. The Korean government implemented a supplementary program to support the leading TLOs’ labor and business expenses. In the current work, the author questions if the program had a significant effect on the performance of TLOs. I analyze the policy effect on the performance of TLOs, as measured by royalty income or the number of technology transfer contracts. In particular, the heterogeneous effect is examined by using quantile regression applied to publicly available university panel data from 2007 to 2015. The results corroborate that the program had a significant impact only on the lower 10% quantile. The government also provides programs for marketing, consulting, and manpower training. However, the policy only focuses on financial support, and the support provided to each university is uniform. In addition, results suggest that the support policy must be diversified based on the characteristics and research capacity of each university.