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Science and Engineering Careers in the United States: An Analysis of Markets and Employment: Capturing Knowledge: The Location Decision of New Ph.D.S Working in Industry
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... With respect to the above, it has been shown that female PhD holders maintain a higher unemployment propensity (Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menéndez, 2005) and that married women display different patterns of mobility compared with married men. According to Sumell et al. (2009), it is more likely for married female PhD holders not to leave the region where they undertook their PhD training. With regard to age, previous studies have established a non-significant effect (Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menéndez, 2005; Zucker et al., 2002a), or else contradictory tendencies have been uncovered. ...
... Location has gathered increasing interest in view of the high regional concentration of firm innovation activities and the importance of the proximity factor in the knowledge transfer process. Studies considering firm locations as a private sector PhD career predictor have demonstrated that firms in regions with a high concentration of innovation activity can attract more scientists and that individuals do not always find a job in the places where they obtained their PhD training (Zucker et al., 2002b; Stephan et al., 2004; Sumell et al., 2009). ...
We have analysed the determinant factors which condition firms' employment of PhDs to undertake R&D activities. It has been traditionally thought that doctorate holders are employed only to generate and absorb scientific knowledge; nonetheless, our study has also revealed that there are additional reasons to employ PhD graduates. We have used an upstream–downstream approach of the innovation process, to establish which contingencies of this process increase the number of PhD holders in firms. We have focused on four contingencies: R&D cooperation, types of R&D activities, failures in the innovation process and key information sources to put into motion the innovation process. Results of this study have confirmed that PhD holders not only play upstream roles in the innovation process but in addition also downstream tasks undertaking knowledge exploitation activities.
... For example, research on this topic focuses variously on productivity and preferences (Balsmeier and Pellens, 2014), gender and family (Fox and Stephan, 2001), perceptions of incentives (Fitzenberger and Leuschner, 2012), the determinants of exit from academic research (Geuna and Shibayama 2015), informational problems leading into PhD study (Mangematin, 2000), trade-offs between salary and publication freedom (Sauermann and Roach, 2014), issues regarding mentors' capacities to provide information on a diversity of potential careers (Bozeman and Gaughan, 2011;Sauermann and Roach, 2012). Additional topics explored include the existence of suitable role models (Steele et al., 2013), the geographical location of suitable industry jobs (Sumell et al., 2009) and the market power of star scientists (Zucker and Darby, 2006;Zucker et al., 2002). This research provides a basis for a needed innovation in the area of research-on-research careers-the enhanced tracking of research careers in non-academic organizations. ...
This handbook chapter summarises research on research careers from a meta-research perspective.
... For example, research on this topic focuses variously on productivity and preferences (Balsmeier and Pellens, 2014), gender and family (Fox and Stephan, 2001), perceptions of incentives (Fitzenberger and Schulze, 2013), the determinants of exit from academic research (Geuna and Shibayama 2015), informational problems leading into PhD study (Mangematin, 2000), trade-offs between salary and publication freedom (Sauermann and Roach, 2014), issues regarding mentors' capacities to provide information on a diversity of potential careers (Bozeman and Gaughan, 2011;Sauermann and Roach, 2012). Additional topics explored include the existence of suitable role models (Steele, Fisman, and Davidson, 2013), the geographical location of suitable industry jobs (Sumell, Stephan, and Adams, 2009) and the market power of star scientists (Zucker and Darby, 2006;Zucker et al., 2002). This research provides a basis for a needed innovation in the area of research on research careers-the enhanced tracking of research careers in nonacademic organisations. ...
... Whether moving to industry is a highly regarded career path is field dependent (Stephan, 2012), but it is an important channel for knowledge transfer to industry (Sumell et al., 2009). ...
It is widely accepted that science and technology are important drivers of economic growth and general welfare. In this context, policy makers are increasinlgy interested in understanding how the international mobility patterns of their researchers will affect their higher education and research systems, and by extension, the economy. Therefore the central theme of this dissertation is international mobility in higher education and research. The aim is to study the drivers and impacts of international mobility on science. The first two chapters will study the drivers of international mobility of students and researchers, respectively. A third chapter will link the international mobility of researchers to their research productivity. This chapter will thus border on the growing literature on the determinants of research productivity. A last and fourth chapter will introduce concepts of social network analysis, by looking at how a researchers network and mobility patterns influence each other, in particular with regard to scientific productivity.
Introduction The goal of this book is to build a better understanding of how returns to research are generated. That understanding is facilitated here by creating explicit linkages between what is funded, who is funded, and the results. This chapter spells out the conceptual and empirical basis of the approach on which the book is grounded and provides a roadmap to the rest of the book. The core insight that drives our approach is importance of the people – students, principal investigators, postdoctoral researchers, and research staff – who conduct research, create new knowledge, and transmit that knowledge into the broader economy (1). Much has been made of the role of documents – like papers and patents – but this chapter instead builds on Oppenheimer's insight that the best way to send knowledge is to wrap it up in a person (2). Indeed, the regional economic activity surrounding universities strongly suggests that regionally bound human beings, not globally accessible documents, are the key to understanding economic impact. The conceptual framework is straightforward. Undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows employed as part of scientific projects obtain valuable training while at the same time creating new knowledge that can be transmitted to their employers once their training is complete. The gains that result from the application of knowledge acquired through research and training accrue to both the employing firm and the workers. Researchers create new ideas that either directly generate new businesses or are transmitted through social and scientific networks to the private sector. Propinquity is a major driver of these effects (3). The empirical framework mirrors the conceptual framework. It uses university data on grant expenditures to characterize who is working on which grants, then traces their subsequent activity through matches with administrative data from the universities, US Census Bureau and other sources. This approach permits new insights into the impact of science. The size of the dataset is large enough to examine outcomes of quite narrowly defined fields, such as food safety research, or different demographic groups. The link to Census Bureau data opens a whole host of possibilities. With these data, one can describe the arc of a scientific career or trace economic impact over time and on an ongoing basis. It is now possible to describe real economic impact, because identifying comparison groups has become feasible.
Using data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates by the National Science Foundation, this study examines factors influencing foreign doctorate recipients’ decisions to stay in the United States after they complete their degrees. This study expands the existing literature on human capital theory on migration decision by exploring the variables that appear to be associated with one’s migration decision, which takes into account the prestige of degrees and the home country context. The findings suggest that the foreign doctorate recipients with a prestigious doctoral degree were less likely to stay in the United States. The home country’s economic conditions relative to those of the United States also significantly influenced one’s migration decision. The foreign doctorate recipients’ odds of staying in the United States increased when the unemployment rate gap between the home country and the United States widened. Lastly, the country of origin was important in predicting migration decisions for foreign doctorate recipients.
Amidst current widespread calls for evidence based decision making on public investments in science and technological innovation, frequently interpreted to imply the employment of some bundle of output, outcome, productivity, or rate-of-return measures, the promises and limitations of performance measures, singly or collectively, varies greatly across contexts. The promises reflect belief in, scholarly research supportive of, and opportunistic provision of performance measures that respond or cater to executive and legislative branch expectations or hopes that such measures will facilitate evidence-based decision-making. The limitations reflect research on the dynamics of scientific discovery, technological innovation and the links between the two that even when well done and used by adepts, performance measures at best provide limited guidance for future expenditure decisions and at worst are rife with potential for incorrect, faddish, chimerical, and counterproductive decisions. As a decision-making enhancement, performance measurement techniques have problematic value when applied to the Big 3 questions of U.S. science policy: (1) what is the optimal size of the Federal government’s investments in science and technology programs; (2) the allocation of these investments among missions/agencies/and programs (and thus fields of science); and (3) the selection of performers, funding mechanisms, and the criteria used to select projects and performers.
Using new data on citations to university patents and scientific publications, we study how geography affects university knowledge spillovers. Citations to patents decline sharply with distance up to about 150 miles and are strongly constrained by state borders. Distance also constrains citations to scientific publications, but the impact is less sharp and persists over greater distances. The state border effect for publications is significant only for lower quality public universities. We show that the state border effect is heterogeneous, and is strongly influenced by university and state characteristics and policies. It is larger for public universities and those with strong local development policies. The border effect is larger in states with strong non-compete laws that facilitate intrastate labor mobility, states with greater reliance on in-state educated scientists and engineers, and states with lower rates of interstate scientific labor mobility. We also confirm the impact of non-compete statutes by studying a policy reform in Michigan.
Using new data on citations to university patents and scientific publications, and measures of distance based on Google maps, we study how geography affects university knowledge diffusion. We show that knowledge flows from patents are localized in two respects: they decline sharply with distance up to about 100 miles, and they are strongly constrained by state borders, controlling for distance. While distance also constrains knowledge spillovers from publications, the state border does not. We investigate how the strength of the state border effect varies with university and state characteristics. It is larger for patents from public, as compared to private, universities and this is partly explained by the local development policies of universities. The border effect is larger in states with stronger non-compete laws that affect intra-state labor mobility, and those with greater reliance on in-state educated scientists and engineers. We confirm the impact of non-compete statutes by studying a policy reform in Michigan that introduced such restrictions.
This paper investigates the technological orientation of firms and universities and their propensity to have knowledge and
technology transfer (KTT) activities. This study looks at the technological potential for KTT and how it is used, emphasizing
differences between smaller and larger firms. To this end we collected information about the technology activities of firms
(patent statistics) and the technology activities of universities. Furthermore, we used survey data on technology transfer
activities. We combined the three datasets and found—especially for smaller firms—that great technology proximity fosters
transfer activities with different universities (case 1). The same is true if proximity is low and expertise is considerable
at universities in the respective technology field (case 2). In both cases additional transfer potential exists. In the second
case firms engage in transfer activities in order to update and modify their knowledge base and as a consequence improve “competitiveness”
in certain technology fields. Furthermore, firms show a tendency to diversify their contacts with universities in order to
avoid knowledge lock-in.
KeywordsInnovation–Knowledge and technology transfer–Technology proximity–Universities–Firms
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