We provide evidence that firms appoint independent directors who are overly sympathetic to management, while still technically independent according to regulatory definitions. We explore a subset of independent directors for whom we have detailed, micro-level data on their views regarding the...

We study the relationships between corporate R&D and three components of public science: knowledge, human capital, and invention. We identify the relationships through firm-specific exposure to changes in federal agency R\&D budgets that are driven by the political composition of congressional...

This paper uses a large language model to develop an ex-ante measure of the commercial potential of scientific findings. In addition to validating the measure against the typical holdout sample, we validate it externally against 1.) the progression of scientific findings through a major...

This article examines the involvement of agricultural and life science faculty at U.S. land grant universities in two types of university-industry relations: academic engagement (sponsored research, industry collaborations, and presentations), academic commercialization (patenting, licensing,...

Around 1875 the U.S. had none of the world's leading research universities; today, it accounts for the majority of the top-ranked. Many observers cite events surrounding World War II as the source of this reversal. We present evidence that U.S. research universities had surpassed most countries'...

Using a survey of AFA members, we analyze how demographics, time allocation, production mechanisms, and institutional factors affect research production during the pandemic. Consistent with the literature, research productivity falls more for women and faculty with young children. Independently...

This paper examines the empirical anomaly that in a sample of 5811 patents on which US faculty are listed as inventors, 26% of the patents are assigned solely to firms rather than to the faculty member's university as is dictated by US university employment policies or the Bayh Dole Act. In this...

This paper explores recent trends in the size of scientific teams and in institutional collaborations. The data derive from 2.4 million scientific papers written in 110 leading U.S. research universities over the period 1981-1999. We measure team size by the number of authors on a scientific...

This paper provides systematic empirical evidence for the distinctive role of universities on local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Assessing the impact of research institutions on entrepreneurship is challenging, given that these institutions are often located in economic and innovation...

Introduction / Caroline M. Hoxby and Kevin Stange -- What Healthcare Teaches Us about Measuring Productivity in Higher Education / Douglas Staiger -- The Productivity of U.S. Postsecondary Institutions / Caroline M. Hoxby -- Labor Market Outcomes and Postsecondary Accountability: Are Imperfect...