Marie Thursby

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · College of Business

We examine information sharing among academics during the research process and show it is context dependent because of differences in trade-offs. When researchers respond to specific requests for information or materials, potential future reciprocity is weighed against the current loss of competitiveness, while general sharing intermediate results...

Transfer of biopharmaceutical inventions between firms has bottlenecks in upstream development that suggest a role for repurposing mechanisms well before the clinical trials stage.

We examine the role of patents as signals used to reduce information asymmetries in entrepreneurial finance. A theoretical model gives conditions for a unique separating equilibrium in which startup founders file for patents to signal invention quality to investors, as well as appropriating value. The theory allows for heterogeneous investors and e...

The 1990s witnessed a dramatic increase in thelicensing activity of U.S. research universities.The sources of thisincrease, as well as the possibility that such an increase signals a change inthe nature of university research, warrant investigation.Thisinvestigation requires a model of technology transfer as a three-stageproduction process involvin...

This paper analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes; the US and Sweden. In the US, the Bayh Dole Act gives universities the right to own inventions from publicly funded research, whereas in Sweden, the professor privilege gives the u...

No abstract available.

The nanotechnology and biotechnology “revolutions” are so-called because their enabling technological breakthroughs were not simply inventions, but discoveries of entirely new methods of inventing. We hypothesize that university participants in either or both of these areas will exhibit greater collaboration with industry than researchers in other...

We examine three hypotheses regarding the effects of the Bayh-Dole Act on research effort of faculty. The first hypothesis we call the status quo hypothesis and it asserts that there has been no effect on research profiles. The second hypothesis, which we call the negative hypothesis, asserts that faculty have been diverted from their traditional r...

No abstract available.

This paper revisits a central issue in entrepreneurial finance, namely the signals technology startups send to external investors to convey information about their quality. We examine the potential for technology startups to use patents and founders, friends and family money (FFF money) as signals to attract business angel and venture capital funds...

We exploit a unique database on research and invention disclosure of faculty at 11 major US universities over a period of 17 years to explore the extent to which faculty involvement in license activity has affected their research profiles. We relate faculty disclosures to their industry and government-sponsored research, publications, and citations...

Incumbent firms are often thought to focus on incremental innovations and only respond to a major technological change once its impact on established markets and/or dominant designs becomes clear. We argue, however, that incumbent firms have many reasons to proactively invent early in cycles of technological change. Our interest is in the strategie...

The central issue we consider is whether university patent licensing, afforded by the Bayh‐Dole Act, has diverted universities away from their basic research mission. The act, passed in 1980, was intended to stimulate the transfer of federally funded research to industry. While statistics on licensing activity suggest that it has served this purpos...

This paper presents a theoretical model of faculty consulting in the context of government and industry funding for research within the university, which then frames an empirical analysis of the funding and consulting of 458 individual faculty inventors from 8 major US universities. In the theory, firms realize that they free ride on government spo...

In a sample of 5811 patents with US faculty as inventors, 26% are assigned solely to firms rather than universities as dictated by US university employment policies and Bayh-Dole. We relate assignment to patent characteristics, university policy, and inventor field. Patents assigned to firms (whether established or start-ups with inventor as princi...

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of university licensing to explain why university license contracts often include payment types that differ from the fixed fees and royalties typically examined by economists. Our findings suggest that milestone payments and annual payments are common because moral hazard, risk sharing, and adverse sele...

We examine commonly observed forms of payment, such as milestones, royalties, or consulting contracts as ways of engaging inventors in the development of licensed inventions. Our theoretical model shows that when milestones are feasible, royalties are not optimal unless the licensing firm is risk averse. The model also predicts the use of consultin...

The effects of appropriability on invention have been well studied, at least since Arrow (1962), but there has been little analysis of the effect of approbriability on the commercialization of existing inventions. Exploiting a database of 966 attempts by private firms to commercialize inventions licensed from MIT between 1980 and 1996, we explore t...

Scientific knowledge has characteristics of a pure public good. It is non-rivalrous in the sense that once generated, it is neither depleted nor diminished by use. Knowledge is also non-excludable since, once it is made available, in the absence of clearly defined property rights, users cannot be excluded from using it. These aspects imply that pri...

Does the adaptation of incumbent firms to new methods of inventing follow similar patterns across industries and inventions? We investigate this question in the context of the revolutionary scientific advances enabling biotechnology and nanotechnology, both of which represent inventions of methods of inventing for incumbent firms. We hypothesize th...

Do financial returns to licensing divert faculty from basic research? In a life cycle model in which faculty can conduct basic and/or applied research (the latter can be licensed) licensing increases applied relative to basic effort. However, leisure falls so basic research need not suffer. If applied effort also leads to publishable output, then r...

Licensing of university inventions to industry has experienced rapid, recent growth. This growth is cited as evidence of university success in technology transfer and it suggests an increasing importance of universities to innovation systems. Concerns have been raised that universities are moving towards applied research and away from fundamental r...

Abstract We seek to explain the empirical anomaly that, in our sample, one- fourth of patents,with a university faculty member,as an inventor,were assigned to for-profit firms. With rare exception, universities specify that inventions resulting from,faculty research,in the university belong,to the university. We develop a model to show that this is...

A survey shows that companies conduct most new science in developed rather than developing economies for reasons that may not always characterize the U.S. situation.

Contrary to popular belief, it is intellectual capital and university collaboration, not just lower costs, that primarily attract companies to locate R&D activities in locations away from their home country, according to a study sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The study of more than 200 multinational companies across 15 industrie...

One of the theoretically important factors for incubator firm performance is the strength of their linkages to the research university sponsoring the technology incubator. Herein, we focus on two types of university linkages to the sponsoring institution: a license obtained from the university and a link to university faculty, while controlling for...

Technology incubators are university-based technology initiatives that should facilitate knowledge flows from the university to the incubator firms. We thus investigate the research question of how knowledge actually flows from universities to incubator firms. Moreover, we assess the effect of these knowledge flows on incubator firm-level different...

In this paper we extend our earlier work on science and engineering faculty disclosure and licensing activity to examine a characteristic of faculty ignored in our earlier work – the gender of faculty in our database of over 4500 faculty at 11 major universities. Not surprisingly, women comprise only 8.55% of the faculty in our sample. They are mos...

In this chapter we provide a general overview of the university licensing process and its dramatic growth over the past decade. We then discuss the role faculty play in commercialization through the licensing process. Concerns have been voiced in recent years over the possibility that the recent growth in university licensing suggests that the trad...

We construct a dynamic model of university research that allows us to examine recent concerns that financial incentives associated with university patent licensing are detrimental to the traditional mission of US research universities. We assume a principal-agent framework in which the university administration is the principal and a faculty resear...

Understanding the nature of the involvement of faculty in university licensing is important for understanding how technology is transferred through licensing as well as more controversial issues, such as the need for university licensing. Using data from a survey of firms that actively license in from universities, the authors explore the importanc...

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 allows universities to patent and exclusively license federally funded inventions. With dramatic growth in university licensing, the Act has become controversial and the subject of policy review. In this Policy Forum we examine the available evidence on the intended and unintended effects of the Act.

At least since Arrow (1962), the effects of appropriability on invention have been well studied, but there has been little analysis of the effect of appropriability on the commercialization of existing inventions. Exploiting a database of 805 attempts by private firms to commercialize inventions licensed from MIT between 1980 and 1996, we explore t...

We examine the interplay of the three major university actors in technology transfer from universities to industry: the faculty, the technology transfer office (TTO), and the central administration. We model the faculty as an agent of the administration, and the TTO as an agent of both the faculty and the administration. Empirical tests of the theo...

The authors previously explored invention licensing from the university's perspective. In this paper we focus on the process from the perspective of firms activity engaged in licensing technology. A survey of industry licensing professionals addresses why some firms license technologies from universities and why others do not. The paper then consid...

University technology transfer offices (TTOs), whichfacilitate and manage the disclosure and licensing of inventions withcommercial potential, must balance the objectives of the university that ownsthe inventions and those of the faculty who create them.A theoreticalmodel of disclosure and licensing allows examination of this balancing act andits e...

No abstract is available for this paper.

The authors report results of a survey of industry licensing executives who identified personal contacts between their R&D staff and university personnel as the most important source of university technologies. Journal publications and presentations at professional meetings were also important. While the least important sources were marketing effor...

In contrast to recent literature, we show that market access requirements (MARs) can be implemented in a procompetitive manner even in the absence of threats in related markets. By focusing on subsidies that are paid only when the requirement is met, we show that a MAR can increase aggregate output relative to free trade provided that the right set...

Proponents of the Bayh-Dole Act argue that industrial use of federally funded research would be reduced without university patent licensing. Our survey of U.S. universities supports this view, emphasizing the embryonic state of most technologies licensed and the need for inventor cooperation in commercialization. Thus, for most university invention...

This paper describes results of our survey of licensing at 62 research universities. We consider ownership, income splits, stage of development, marketing, license policies and characteristics, goals of licensing and the role of the inventor in licensing. Based on these results we analyze the relationship between licensing outcomes and both the obj...

Historically, commercial use of university research has been viewed in terms of spillovers. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in technology transfer through licensing as universities attempt to appropriate the returns from faculty research. This change has prompted concerns regarding the source of this growth - specifically, whether it s...

This paper examines ex post subsidies as a means of enforcing market share targets. Subsidies set after firms make their strategic decisions are shown to create powerful incentives for firms to raise prices. These effects are stronger when targets, and hence subsidies, are specified on a firm-specific rather than industry-wide basis. This occurs be...

Proponents of the Bayh-Dole Act argue that unless universities have the right to license patentable inventions, many results from federally funded research would never be transferred to industry. Our survey of U.S. research universities supports this view. Results point to the embryonic state of most technologies licensed and the need for inventor...

Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips stock price has been predicted using the difference between core and headline CPI in the United States. Linear trends in the CPI difference allow accurate prediction of the prices at a five to ten-year horizon.

The outcome of trade policies to increase access for foreign firms to the home country's market is shown to be sensitive to the implementation procedure used. The importance of the timing of moves between government and firms is highlighted by focusing on subsidies to implement minimum market share requirements.

The authors examine anticipatory product standards intended to improve the strategic position of firms in an international patent race where firms do R&D to develop products that are close substitutes. The effects of a standard depend on the way the standard is specified, which firm develops which product, and the order of discovery. Simple standar...

[eng] We present a two-sided search model where agents differ by their human capital endowment and where workers of different skill are imperfect substitutes. Then the labor market endogenously divides into disjoint segments and wage inequality will depend on the degree of labor market segmentation. The most important results are : 1) overall wage...

In this paper, we develop and estimate a model of commercial smuggling in which some, but not all, firms smuggle a portion of the cigarettes they sell. The model is used to examine the effects on interstate cigarette smuggling of the Contraband Cigarette Act and a change in the federal excise tax. We find that both policies have unintentional effec...

This study analyzes the trade flows of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) both among its member countries and with the rest of the world for the 1997-2002 and 2003-2007 periods. In this paper, the research question is whether the trade flows of the GCC countries with their partners have sustained and/or they have developed new relations over time,...

In this paper, we examine optimal tax/subsidy policies with export marketing boards that compete as oligopolists in world markets. By taking a targeting approach to identifying optimal policies, we are able to show how optimal policies vary with the objectives of board, the nature of competition in world markets, as well as assumptions about market...

We examine how market structure and enforcement affect smuggling and welfare in a model where smuggling is camouflaged by legal sales. Conditions are given for when some, but not necessarily all, firms smuggle. With camouflaging, the market price is below the price when all sales are legal, so smuggling improves welfare if the price effect outweigh...

Recent work in optimal trade policy for imperfectly competitive markets usually identifies the optimal level of an instrument, and when more instruments are allowed, general interpretations have been unavailable, This paper analyzes the jointly optimal levels of a Variety of instruments with oligopolistic competition. A targeting principle for iden...

When governments choose trade policy, rarely do they have complete information, At the time decisions are made, policy makers have only estimates of market responses, as well as the responses of foreign governments. In many realistic situations, even the policy objectives of other governments may not be known. For example, the balance of constituti...

We analyse a dynamic North-South model of innovation, technology transfer, and trade. Northern firms conduct R&D using labour which has alternative uses producing in the R&D sector or a nontraded good sector. Since technology transfer prevents the North from fully appropriating benefits of R&D, the optimal rate of innovation for either profit maxim...

Bilateral trade flows are used to examine the Linder hypothesis and the effect of exchange-rate variability in a gra vity-type trade model derived from an underlying demand and supply mo del. A behavioral model is used to justify examining these issues joi ntly. The model performs well empirically using a sample of seventeen countries for the perio...

This paper analyzes the steady state open-loop Nash equilibrium of a game in which a Northern monopolist devotes resources to new product development and a Southern planner diverts resources into reverse engineering to learn the technology to produce these. A steady state equilibrium technology gap exists, showing that a constant technology gap ove...

Evidence shows that real-effort investments can affect bilateral bargaining outcomes. This paper investigates whether similar investments can inhibit equilibrium convergence of experimental markets. In one treatment, sellers’ relative effort affects the allocation of production costs, but a random productivity shock ensures that the allocation is n...

This paper examines tariff equilibria in a static two country trade model under a general class of conjectures regarding foreign retaliation. We assume that each country chooses its optimum tariff given some conjecture in this class and derive the associated conjectural tariff equilibrium, which can be thought of as a Nash equilibrium conditional o...

We provide a game theoretic analysis of information sharing among competing researchers in two contexts: sharing when one researcher is asked by another to share specific information or materials and sharing involving presentation of new results in an open forum. The models are tested based on a survey of German and UK bio-scientists. The theory an...