nep-sog New Economics Papers
on Sociology of Economics
Issue of 2013‒05‒05
two papers chosen by
Jonas Holmström
Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration

  1. Do Large Departments Make Academics More Productive? Agglomeration and Peer Effects in Research By Clément Bosquet; Pierre-Philippe Combes
  2. What makes companies pursue an open science strategy? By Markus Simeth; Julio Raffo

  1. By: Clément Bosquet; Pierre-Philippe Combes
    Abstract: We study the effect of a large set of department characteristics on individual publication records. We control for many individual time-varying characteristics, individual fixed-effects and reverse causality. Department characteristics have an explanatory power that can be as high as that of individual characteristics. The departments that generate most externalities are those where academics are homogeneous in terms of publication performance and have diverse research fields, and, to a lesser extent, large departments, with more women, older academics, star academics and foreign co-authors. Department specialisation in a field also favours publication in that field. More students per academic does not penalise publication. At the individual level, women and older academics publish less, while the average publication quality increases with average number of authors per paper, individual field diversity, number of published papers and foreign co-authors.
    Keywords: productivity determinants, economic geography, networks, economics of science, selection and endogeneity
    JEL: R12 J24 I3
    Date: 2013–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:sercdp:0133&r=sog
  2. By: Markus Simeth (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), College of Management, Switzerland); Julio Raffo (World Intellectual Property Organization, Economics and Statistics Division, Geneva, Switzerland)
    Abstract: Whereas recent scholarly research has provided many insights about universities engaging in commercial activities, there is still little empirical evidence regarding the opposite phenomenon of companies disseminating scientific knowledge. Our paper aims to fill this gap and explores the motivations of firms that disclose research outcomes in a scientific format. Besides considering an internal firm dimension, we focus particularly on knowledge sourcing from academic institutions and the appropriability regime using a cost-benefit framework. We conduct an econometric analysis with firm-level data from the fourth edition of the French Community Innovation Survey (CIS4) and matched scientific publications for a sample of 2,512 R&D performing firms from all manufacturing sectors. The analysis provides evidence that the access to important scientific knowledge imposes the adoption of academic disclosure principles, whereas the mere existence of collaborative links with academic institutions is not a strong predictor. Furthermore, the results suggest that overall industry conditions are influential in shaping the cost-benefit rationale of firms with respect to scientific disclosure.
    Keywords: R&D, Industrial Science, Knowledge Disclosure, University-Industry collaboration
    Date: 2013–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wip:wpaper:6&r=sog

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