Heterogeneous Policy Effect of the Reform of Commercialization of Universities'Scientific and Technological Achievements in China
The effective commercialization of universities'scientific and technological(S&T)achievements plays a cru-cial role in advancing the development of high-tech industries and the local economy.A key challenge for China's shift towards high-quality economic development is converting the scientific value of university research into actual productiv-ity.Drawing lessons from the reforms of commercialization of S&T achievements in the U.S.and European universities,this paper identifies investment in universities and incentives for S&T personnel as central issues.The focus is on prop-erty rights arrangements for these achievements.In 2015,China amended the Law of the People's Republic of China on Promoting the Commercialization of Scientific and Technological Achievements.This amendment is the reform of commer-cialization of S&T achievements in China's universities(hereinafter referred to as the reform).The reform focuses on the property rights arrangements for S&T achievements.It involves the government relinquishing its rights to universities'S&T achievements and decentralizing these rights within universities.Additionally,the minimum income share for univer-sities'S&T personnel from these achievements is increased from 20％to 50％.This paper highlights the significant heterogeneity in the reform across China's universities.We model the alloca-tion of rights to benefit between universities and S&T personnel as a two-stage game,determined primarily by the S&T personnel's influence on revenues from the commercialization of S&T achievements.When S&T personnel's input effi-ciency is high enough to enable the actual share to exceed the legal minimum share,the final royalty allocation is deter-mined endogenously by this game.Otherwise,it is fixed exogenously by law.This paper can identify and explain the het-erogeneous policy effects of the reform by establishing the deterministic relationship between S&T personnel's actual share of rights to benefit and the importance of their inputs in commercialization activities.Using data from 2,189 higher education institutions in China(2008-2017),including corresponding patent data,this study employs the reform as a quasi-natural experiment.Universities are divided into treatment and control groups based on pre-reform estimates of the output elasticity of S&T personnel.The heterogeneity in property rights mechanisms is tested using a standard difference-in-differences model.The findings reveal a 19％average increase in income from commercialization of S&T achievements for universities,with significant heterogeneity in income distribution impacts;and the treatment group experiences a policy effectiveness impact that is 50％—211％higher than the control group.The paper also investigates"policy enhancement"effects at provincial and university levels,finding that additional increases in S&T personnel's minimum share further incentivize universities'commercialization of S&T achievements.Furthermore,by establishing a panel of university inventors and analyzing university patent data,the study demonstrates that the reform significantly promotes both the frequency of patent filings by existing inventors and the entry of new in-ventors,while accelerating the patent commercialization cycle without compromising technology transaction quality.The contributions of this paper can be summarized in three folds.(1)The theoretical model constructed in this paper provides a theoretical basis for explaining the heterogeneity of the policy effects of the reform.(2)This paper empirically investigates the reform using data on S&T achievements of Chinese universities at the national level and thus reveals the heterogeneity effect of institutional change.The heterogeneity of policies is strongly explained in the data through the het-erogeneity of the output elasticity of S&T personnel in universities,and the mechanism inference derived is validated.Discovering and analyzing the heterogeneity effect of the reform in China is the main empirical innovation of this paper.(3)We also use inventor-level micro-patent data from China's universities and find that the mechanism of the reform comes from the increase in incentives for S&T personnel in universities and the shortening of the commercialization cycle of newly filed patents.
Reform of Commercialization of Scientific and Technological AchievementsUniversityHeterogeneous Policy Effect
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