Essays on Public Funding for Private Innovation
Author: Jason Rathje
Publisher:
Published: 2019
Total Pages:
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Despite the significant annual expenditure of public (government) research and development (R& D) funding allocated to private, for-profit firms, research is unclear as to if whether or not public funding is positively associated with firm performance. To partially address this gap, in three essays I examine the most common funding tie between public organizations and private firms in the U.S. - public-private R& D relationships. In the first two essays, I conceptualize public-private R& D relationships as institutional hybrids and argue and show that relative to technologies developed without a public-sector partner, the institutional conflict underlying public-private R& D relationships is positively related to the creation of valuable and destabilizing technologies. To provide support for my institutional hybrids' hypotheses, I employ a novel machine learning-matching method to examine all patented technologies in the U.S. between the years 1982-2012. In the final essay, I focus on technology ventures (i.e., start-ups) that form a contractual R& D relationship with a public-consumer (e.g., NASA, DoD) and show that these start-ups produce technologies faster and survive longer than their non-contracted peers. However, due to the stabilizing dependencies inherent in public-consumer relationships, these ventures also experience slower growth. I conclude with management and policy implications.