We review and condense the body of literature on the economic returns of public R&D on private R&D and find that: (i) private returns to R&D appear to be large and larger than the returns to alternative investments; (ii) private R&D and R&D subsidies are positively correlated and there is no...

We analyze the influence of two contradicting settings on the success in the academic spin-off creation process. Scientists, who are embedded in the academic setting, have to reach out and adapt to the logics of the commercial setting to successfully found their firm. However, along this...

Academic entrepreneurship has become an increasingly important channel through which universities contribute to economic development. This paper studies academic entrepreneurs using a comprehensive venture capital database. I find that about two-thirds of the academic entrepreneurs locate their...

The external circumstances for universities have been changing rapidly. In order to be competitive, survive, and flourish, universities have shown a growing enthusiasm to generate financial revenues externally. The literature refers to this phenomenon as academic capitalism, defined as the...

This paper investigates whether or not research quality is significantly associated with a university's ability to attract students from other provinces in Italy. First university enrolments of students over the period 2003-2011 are regressed on several universities' research quality indicators...

We investigate the causes and consequences of the aging of the scientific workforce. Using novel data on the population of US chemistry faculty members over fifty years, we find that the secular increase in the age of the academic workforce has been mainly driven by the slowdown in faculty...

We examine the effect of pregnancy and parenthood on the research productivity of academic economists. Combining the survey responses of nearly 10,000 economists with their publication records as documented in their RePEc accounts, we do not find that motherhood is associated with low research...