Radu Munteanu

Research papers:

University research and Technology transfer. Analyzing the quality of inventions [pdf] (July 2007)

In this paper I show empirically an important quality measure for the university inventions, grants, affects the probability of taking a secrecy and a license. A secrecy is a confidential agreement used by the firms to learn about the quality of inventions prior to licensing.

The paper also introduces a new quality measure for the inventions which is based on the number of secrecy agreements previously executed on the invention. I use two theoretical approaches to model the decision of taking a secrecy, namely sequentially and simultaneously. Both approaches provide predictions regarding how the quality variables affect the probability of taking a secrecy and a license.

Using data on licensing inventions at University of California, San Diego I test the predictions of the simultaneous model. The results show that the grants and other quality variables affect positively the probability of entering a secrecy and a license agreement. Another main result is that the number of past secrecy agreements can be used as a contemporaneous measure of invention’s quality.

Quality and Beliefs in the market for university inventions [pdf] (July 2007)

The paper analyzes the efficiency implications for the licensing process of university inventions when firms can use the secrecy device. Secrecy is a confidential agreement used by the firms to learn about the quality of inventions prior to licensing. I use a bargaining model with one-side private information to analyze the extent to which the secrecy device improves the efficiency of the licensing process. The decision to enter a secrecy agreement is determined by the uncertainty about the underlying quality of inventions. The bargaining model assumes that the university/inventor has private information about the value of invention and that firms use secrecies as costly device to guarantee the quality of the invention.

The main results show that the secrecy device increases the efficiency of the licensing process and that the gains in efficiency are proportional with the difference between the established firm’s cost of production and the inventor’s cost of production.

Stage of Development and licensing university inventions [pdf] (July 2007)

In this chapter I analyze the correlation between the licensing activity by start-ups and established firms and the inventions’ stages of development. Using a new variable to characterize the inventions, stage of development, I also study the correlation between this variable and two other outcomes: patenting activity and royalty generation.

The decision of firms to license at various stages of development could be affected by comparative advantage principle or by asymmetry of information.

The main results show that the relative likelihood of licensing by start-ups to licensing by established firms is lower for more advanced stage inventions relative to earlier stage inventions. The results regarding the change in relative likelihood ratio across stages of development also hold when I use other outcome variables, like patenting and royalty creation.