Testing the causal relationship between academic patenting and scientific publishing in Germany: Crowding-out or reinforcement?

Abstract

The paper investigates the intertemporal spillover effects from patenting to future publishing activities and vice versa among university employees with a country focus on the German Laender Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia. Individual data from university patentees who successfully issued a patent at a public university before and after 2005 from the selected German Laender is used for measuring the Granger-causal effects between both activities. The interaction of personal and institutional characteristics of academic patentees is taken into account. By using Granger-causality tests in a dynamic panel model, we test the overall effect as well as group or Laender specific effects. Our findings show that there is a positive feedback relationship between patenting and publishing activities. An increase in patent applications results in higher numbers of future publications; reciprocally, an increase of publications contributes to a higher output of future patent applications. Additionally, we find interrelations of the research output with seniority, academic degree of the scientists and non-university work experience. The paper further presents findings about motives, skills and experience of so-called star scientists and other academic inventors.