Life Scientist Mobility from Academe to Industry: Does Academic Entrepreneurship Induce a Costly ?Brain Drain? on the Not-for-Profit Research Sector?

Arbeitspapier

When academic researchers participate in commercialization using for-profit firms there is a potentially costly trade-off – their time and effort are diverted away from academic knowledge creation. This is a form of brain drain on the not-for-profit research sector which may reduce knowledge accumulation and adversely impact long-run economic growth. In this paper, we examine the economic significance of the brain drain phenomenon using scientist-level panel data. We identify life scientists who start or join for-profit firms using information from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and analyze the research performance of these scientists relative to a control group of randomly selected research peers. Combining our statistical results with data on the number of university spin-offs in the U.S. from 1994 to 2004 we find the academic brain drain has a nontrivial impact on knowledge creation in the not-forprofit research sector.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 07-072

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Forschungskooperation ; Brain Drain ; Hochschulforschung ; Industrielle Forschung ; Nonprofit-Organisation ; Naturwissenschaftler ; Arbeitsmobilität ; USA

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Toole, Andrew A. ; Czarnitzki, Dirk
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW)
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/24657
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET