Economics of Innovation at TUM

Our research in the area of applied microeconomics focuses on the economics of innovation and the economics of science.

Research News

Research on funding and productivity of university researchers forthcoming in the "International Journal of Industrial Organization".

Publikationen |


Academics are increasingly encouraged to acquire external grants to finance their research, and often hold grants from multiple funders concurrently to ensure the continuity of their work. However, there are concerns that inefficiencies occur when funding is received from multiple sponsors, especially when this originates from different sectors. This study investigates complementarities between public/non-profit and private sector sources of research funding with regard to academic output in terms of publications, research impact and research orientation. The empirical analysis is based on novel data on external public/non-profit research grants and industry funding for tenured engineering academics employed at fifteen UK universities. The results suggest that while research grants are generally associated with higher research outcomes, industry funding decreases the marginal utility of public/non-profit funding by lowering the increase in publication rate associated with public/non-profit grants. At the same time, for more commercially oriented research, measured as its patentability score, we find some support for complementarities between public and private-sector research funding. These results suggest that provision of public grants is crucial to the production of research that is distributed openly through publications and proceedings. Private sector grants are important as they may enable more applied research trajectories for those capable of combining publicly and industry sponsored research.


Recent Publications (click to see all publications)

Abstract #1: Investment in innovation is characterized by uncertain and often intangible outcomes, knowledge spillovers as well as information asymmetries between managers vis-à-vis lenders and investors. These properties affect the financing of innovation. Financing constraints occur when firms' innovation activities are affected negatively by the lack of internal financing and constrained access to external financing, including high cost of debt or a shortage of equity. The extent to which a firm's innovation activities are affected by…

Abstract: Green start-ups play a vital role in the needed transition towards more environmentally sustainable economies. Yet our understanding of why some founders start green ventures and others do not remains incomplete. We build on the cognitive and decision-making perspectives on start-ups pro-environmental engagement to shed light on the role of founders’ personality traits - focusing on the ‘Big 5’ and risk tolerance - in explaining whether founders’ start new ventures with environmentally friendly products. Our analysis of a large,…

Abstract: Corporate research and development constitutes one of the main sources of innovation. Recent research, however, discusses a decline in corporate research and its implications for technological progress. The contribution of this study is to model research & development (R&D) decisions in an R&D investment model that allows the analysis of firms’ engagement in research (R) as compared to development (D) activities. The model predicts higher investments in both activities for larger firms, but it also shows that research intensity, i.e.…

Abstract: Multiple institutional affiliations occur when an academic belongs to more than one organisation. Recent research shows an increase in multiple affiliations, but evidence on roles and motivations is mainly anecdotal. We develop in this study a typology of co-affiliations which identifies four types based on their purpose and origin. We draw on results from a unique international survey on academics in three major science nations (the UK, Germany and Japan) to study the different drivers for the four types of co-affiliations. The…

Abstract: Research suggests that public subsidies for newly founded firms have a positive effect on follow-on financing, in particular on Venture Capital (VC), through providing certification and early-stage liquidity. This study shows that the various sources of VC value public start-up subsidies differently. It is the first to differentiate between distinct types of investors who pursue different investment strategies. We show for a large sample of knowledge-intensive start-ups that there is indeed a correlation between subsidies and all…

Abstract: This study investigates the effect of competitive project-funding on researchers' publication outputs. Using detailed information on applicants at the Swiss National Science Foundation  and their proposal evaluations, we employ a case-control design that accounts for individual heterogeneity of researchers and selection into treatment (e.g. funding). We estimate the impact of grant award on a set of output indicators measuring the creation of new research results (the number of peer-reviewed articles), its relevance (number of…

Abstract This study provides the first systematic, international, large‐scale evidence on the extent and nature of multiple institutional affiliations on journal publications. Studying more than 15 million authors and 22 million articles from 40 countries we document that: In 2019, almost one in three articles was (co‐)authored by authors with multiple affiliations and the share of authors with multiple affiliations increased from around 10% to 16% since 1996. The growth of multiple affiliations is prevalent in all fields and it is stronger in…