What is the causal effect of R&D on patenting activity in a “professor’s privilege” country? Evidence from Sweden

Abstract

We investigate the responsiveness of academic patenting to research and development (R&D) at the subject level at Swedish universities in panel data regressions. The general responsiveness to R&D is found to be higher than corresponding estimates in US studies, especially when we adopt instrumental variable techniques that address endogeneity in the R&D-to-patent relationship studied. We also find that this responsiveness is not associated with a lower quality of patents measured in terms of citations. A higher responsiveness from R&D to patenting is found in the fields of chemical engineering, chemistry (science), electrical engineering, electronics, and photonics, information technology, medicine, and microbiology than in other patenting fields. Our main result, that academia in Sweden contributes well to inventive activity, supports the view that the professor’s privilege—that university researchers themselves have ownership to their inventions—may be a contributing factor.