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The Role of Research Orientation for Attracting Competitive Research Funding

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Technology Transfer in a Global Economy

Part of the book series: International Studies in Entrepreneurship ((ISEN,volume 28))

Abstract

This article studies the role of research orientation for attracting research grants at higher education institutions in Germany. Traditionally, research activities were funded by the institutions’ core budget. More recently, extramural research funding has become increasingly important. Besides the public sector, industry provides a growing share of such funds. The results based on a sample of professors in science and engineering suggest that basic and applied research is complementarity for attracting research funding from industry. Thus, professors who conduct basic research in addition to research on the applicability of their results appear to be most successful in raising industry funds. For raising grants from public sources, it turns out that specialization is more important. Specialized research units on either basic or applied research obtain significantly more public grants which point to a substitutive relationship between basic and applied research for grants from public sources.

The author is grateful to the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) for providing the survey data, to Thorsten Doherr for help in retrieving the patent data and to Susanne Thorwarth for help with data preparation. The author would also like to thank participants of the DRUID Summer Conference 2011 (Copenhagen, Denmark), the Technology Transfer Society Annual Conference 2011 (Augsburg, Germany) and seminars at K.U. Leuven and ZEW for valuable comments. The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The sum of INDFUND and GOVFUND is ‘total third-party funding’. Adding this to the ‘core’ institutional funding (COREFUND) yields the units’ overall funding: TOTALFUND  =  INDFUND  +  GOVFUND  +  COREFUND.

  2. 2.

    Patent forward citations have been shown to be a suitable measure for the quality, importance, or significance of a patented invention and have been used in various studies (see, e.g. Henderson et al. 1998; Hall et al. 2001).

  3. 3.

    Cross-correlations between the main variables are presented in Table 3.4.

  4. 4.

    The standard Tobit model requires the assumption of homoscedasticity; otherwise, the estimates are inconsistent (cf. Greene 2000). Tests on heteroscedasticity (Wald tests and LR tests) using a heteroscedastic specification of the Tobit model in which the homoscedastic standard error σ was replaced with σi  =  σ exp(Z’α) in the likelihood function find indeed evidence of heteroscedasticity. Consequently, regional dummies, one for each of the 16 German states, and field and institution-type dummies were used to model group-wise multiplicative heteroscedasticity. The presented estimation results are thus obtained from heteroscedastic-consistent estimations.

  5. 5.

    This transformation results in a shift in interpretation of the variable from ‘share of effort devoted to basic or applied research’ to ‘staff working on basic or applied research’. Thus, it ought to be kept in mind for the interpretation of the results that these variables (BASIC and APPLIED) also measure lab size.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation, K.U.Leuven (FEB), University of Leuven, Naamsestraat 69, Leuven, 3000, Belgium

    Hanna Hottenrott

  2. Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, Germany

    Hanna Hottenrott

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  1. Hanna Hottenrott
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Correspondence to Hanna Hottenrott .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Institute of Development Strategies, Indiana University, East 10th Street 1315, Bloomington, 47405, Indiana, USA

    David B. Audretsch

  2. , Department of Management & Organization, University of Augsburg, Universitaetsstr. 16, Augsburg, 86159, Germany

    Erik E. Lehmann

  3. , Department of Economics, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, 27402, North Carolina, USA

    Albert N. Link

  4. , Department of Business Administration, University of Augsburg, Universitaetsstr. 16, Augsburg, 86159, Germany

    Alexander Starnecker

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3.4 Cross-correlations matrix between main variables
Full size table
Table 3.5 Grants, research orientation, and research performance by research fields and institution type (means)
Full size table

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Hottenrott, H. (2012). The Role of Research Orientation for Attracting Competitive Research Funding. In: Audretsch, D., Lehmann, E., Link, A., Starnecker, A. (eds) Technology Transfer in a Global Economy. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 28. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6102-9_3

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