Multiple missions and academic entrepreneurship’, AEA Annual Meeting Paper

This paper analyzes the choice of academic scientists to commercially exploit their re-search. I build a model of the timing of entry into commercial activities by an academic research team, and analyze the returns and costs of these activities. In order to focus on the peculiarities of academic entrepreneurship as opposed to industrial entrepreneurship, I compare the behavior and performance of the academic team to an industrial research team. The two teams are assumed to differ in their objectives, governance modes and in-centive systems. I show that, while in some cases academic scientists are more reluctant to commercialize research, in other cases they may commercialize faster than profit-seeking firms would – and perform less basic research. I also derive that academic scientists tend to enter commercial projects with higher returns than industrial actors, and there-fore a self-selection mechanism may explain the success of ‘academic entrepreneurs’. This study helps interpreting the mixed evidence on the success of, and the arguments in favor and against the involvement of universities into business-related research activities. I also identify and discuss a series of implications for empirical analyses of the commercialization of academic research