Using a new dataset encompassing more than 2,200 inventions made by Max Planck Society researchers from 1980 to 2004, we explore how licensee and technology characteristics affect the licensing and commercialization of technologies from public research. We find no evidence that spin-offs and...

It has long been argued that geographic co-location supports knowledge spillovers. More recently, this argument has been challenged by showing that knowledge spillovers mainly flow through social networks, which may or may not be localized at various geographic scales. We further scrutinize the...