Cutting the Innovation Engine

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Elisabeth Ruth Perlman shows how federal funding cuts in university research impact innovation outputs. Decreased publications, increased patents, and shift from federal to private funding. Image courtesy of interviewee. December 21, 2023

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Institution: U.S. Census Bureau

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Elisabeth Ruth Perlman shows how federal funding cuts in university research impact innovation outputs. Decreased publications, increased patents, and shift from federal to private funding.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 21, 2023

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The research question addresses how a decline in federal funding impacts university research outputs. The authors believe university research is vital for the U.S. economy and innovation, and point out that a significant decline in federal funding has been observed over the last 40 years, leading universities to seek private sector funding as a means of diversification and stability.

The study differentiates itself by focusing on individual researchers rather than aggregate data, exploring how reductions in federal funding influence their outputs, such as patenting, publishing, and entrepreneurship. The methodology involves an event study design to analyze the effects of federal funding shocks and relate them to changes in researchers' output.

Findings indicate a persistent decline in federal funding leads to a decrease in researchers' individual funding levels. However, there is also a corresponding increase in private funding, suggesting that researchers are able to recover some funding losses through private sources. This video video shift leads to a complex outcome where researchers become less likely to engage in high-tech entrepreneurship but more likely to patent their work.

The authors suggest that federal funding is conducive to basic research, while private funding may better support applied research, influencing how research results are commercialized. Ultimately, they conclude that federal funding cuts change the landscape of research outputs and commercialization pathways, emphasizing a shift towards private sector appropriation and engagement over independent entrepreneurship.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The research question we have is,

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how does a decline in federal funding affect the outputs

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of university research?

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So, we're interested in this questions for several reasons.

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You know, one, we believe

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that university research is very important

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to the US economy, to the innovation of new, ideas

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and new technologies in the US economy.

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It's a large percentage of the r

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and d that happens in the US economy.

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Two, a large percentage

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of university research is impacted by federal funds.

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And we've seen a significant decrease in this percentage

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of university research impacted

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by federal funds over the last 40 years, as well

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as a significant decrease in the federal share of r

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and d spending over the last 40 years as a whole.

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Universities have responded to this by thinking about

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how can they get funding that's not federal government,

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because they're very reliant on federal government funding.

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And many universities have explicitly said, you know,

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we want to shift from being just reliant on federal funding

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to funding in the private sector

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to private companies giving grants to universities

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to engage in r and d.

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And they've explicitly looked

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to shift their funding from federal funding

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to private funding because they think this diversified

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funding portfolio will be more stable.

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Now, we don't engage in this question of stability,

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but instead we ask how individual researchers

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that are supported by this funding are impacted

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by declines in federal funding

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and possible increases in private

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funding that result from that.

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There are a number of papers where we know

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that federal funding, you know, increases r and d

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and increases private spillovers.

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What those papers show is that you have more federal funding

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and you get more of innovation outcomes

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that you would expect.

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Patents and papers. Um, as well as that,

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when you see increases in federal funding in specific areas,

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you also see sort of this crowd in effect

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that there's more private funding.

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But these papers that exist, this sort

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of look at this are all in the aggregate level.

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So what our paper does that's different

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is we're actually following the careers of individuals

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who are sponsored by this grant.

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So it's not just what happens when a field gets

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more, funding.

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Does that field or

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that university also get more private funding?

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Does that field or that university also produce more

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papers or patents?

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But how are the individuals that are supported

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by these grants affected in producing more

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papers or patents?

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And then we are also able to look directly through use

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of census data at individuals,

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engaging in entrepreneurship, which we define as,

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being at a new high tech age zero high tech company.

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Uh, and so, you know, that's something

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that previous papers really have not been able to get at.

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But because through census data we can follow people's

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careers over time, we're able to actually

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follow them in that way.

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The data we're using in the paper is based on

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some really large efforts to collect administrative data

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and bring administrative data together.

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So we start off with a project that's out of the University

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of Michigan, called umetrics,

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and that collects administrative data on research grants

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and awards for, in our case, 22 universities.

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They're continuing to try to expand this project,

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so I think they're actually up to 30 some universities now,

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which has individual level grant payments for all employees.

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And so then the census takes these grant individual level

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grant payments in

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and, links them to our data on individuals.

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We also know attributes of the grants.

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So in specific,

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the thing we use in the the paper are CFDA codes.

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That's catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance,

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which is a way that the US government categorizes

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its grants into roughly to speak of fields.

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Uh, so then we can link that

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to data on the CFDA codes as a whole.

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So they aggregate data in that field.

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On the other side, we can bring these individuals into

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census and we can link to IRS W2 forms,

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which have, you know, the individual, how much they're paid

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and who pays them,

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or at least what federal tax ID is paying them.

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Um, we can bring it to the LEHD, the longitudinal

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employer household dataset, which is from UI records,

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state UI records,

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and again, is linking an individual's employer

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through a tax ID to the individual so you know

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how much they're paid and where they're, they work, as well

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as census data on these establishments.

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So knowing what industry the establishments are, knowing

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what year these establishments were founded, we're also able

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to link these individuals to their patents.

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And that's done through the Metrics project

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and their publications, which is also done

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through the metrics projects.

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So we're really able to bring this huge amount

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of different administrative

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and sort of, you know, large comprehensive sources

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of data together to look at these different outcomes.

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The main methodology we use here is an event study.

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So we specifically look for,

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CFDA codes.

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So I mentioned the, that's roughly a field that have had

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large shocks to funding in them.

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So we, this is sort of, you know,

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we select based on their characteristics.

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So we look for ones that have had at least a 40% decrease

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in federal funding or in funding,

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'cause they're all federal grants.

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And then an increase again,

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and we say we don't want you to have more than

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a 20% increase or decrease in the two years

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before that 40% dip.

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Um, and we want you to have at least returned,

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you know, 80% in the year after.

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So it really is a shock.

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So we're looking at something that

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we believe is quite idiosyncratic.

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We did a lot of work to try

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to look at why these shocks happened

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and, you know, most of them

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don't necessarily bear mentioning in the public record,

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so it was really hard to get data.

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But the ones we could find, it seems to be

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like something quite random that's uncorrelated with,

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with the tech fields.

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And we also did some testing to see if these shocks seem

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to be related to overall trends within these fields

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of patenting and, high tech startups.

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And they do not. So we use the shocks

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to create an event study.

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So we look at researchers who are paid on these CFDA codes,

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as well as controlled CFDA codes,

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which have had no more than a 20% variation,

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over the timeframe.

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And we say

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after this shock, what happens to your being at,

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high tech, age zero company to patenting

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and to publication?

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So it's a very simple event study set up.

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I had noted before that we wanted to understand the effect

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of these federal funding cuts on the funding

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of individual researchers.

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And that we saw, one, we saw when one

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of these fund federal funding cuts came in,

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that individual researchers saw

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a decrease in their funding levels that was persistent.

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But we were also interested in the question of whether this,

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whether people were able to,

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as university presidents had talked about substitute private

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funding for federal funding.

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So we asked the question of

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after one of these funding cuts, did we see

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an increase in private funding?

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And we do in fact, find an increase in private funding

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after one of these cuts.

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So total funding decreases by about 15%,

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which is about a 28% decrease in federal funding,

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but a 15% increase in private funding.

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So it's something like they're able

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to get 10 cents on the dollar

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of lost federal funding made up for in private funding.

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So we think that this shift from, federal funding

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to private funding is very important for what's

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Actually going on in these mechanisms,

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because we would expect from a pure loss of money

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that you would see all of the things decrease,

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that you would see less patenting, less publications,

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and fewer high tech entrepreneurship.

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You know, you're just less able to, engage in research,

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but the shift suggests that there's something more nuanced.

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And so in this, this, more nuanced shift,

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the question is why do you have this increase in patenting?

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And so one way to think about this would be

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that perhaps federal private funding is

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better at supporting applied research,

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whereas federal funding is better at supporting basic

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research, or at least,

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private funding is bad at supporting basic research.

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And so this would, you know,

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give you a reason why patenting would increase,

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even though funding decrease

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that people are doing more applied research.

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But this wouldn't explain the decrease in,

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high tech entrepreneurship

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because high tech entrepreneurship is going to be, you know,

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very applied as well.

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These are things that people think can, they can privatize

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and, and turn into companies.

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And so we think that what's going on is

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that this is an appropriation story.

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The government gives funding with a very open notice.

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They explicitly want the researchers

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and the universities to retain control of the things

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that they produce so

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that they can have spillover effects in the US economy.

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This is the goal of the federal government.

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Uh, they believe the public has paid for this research,

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and the public should in some sense get

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access to this research.

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In contrast, when a private company is funding research,

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they're doing it because they want those r and d outputs.

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They want presumably to commercialize those r and d outputs.

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And so they're interested in appropriating

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those r and d outputs.

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And so this explains why you would see fewer people taking

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the ideas that are produced on private, grants

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and turning them into their own companies

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and why you would see more of those ideas patented.

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Because patenting is, you know, intellectual property.

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It's a way of creating property that these,

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private companies can appropriate.

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And we see, in sort of our, our talking to

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tech transfer offices

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and to researchers that a very common thing, is

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for private companies

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to explicitly write into their grant contracts that they,

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you know, want the researchers to patent

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that they will maintain control of the patents.

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And so they're actually putting conditions on these grants

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that they're negotiating with these, these researchers

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that they will create these appropriable,

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pieces of property.

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Um, which again, then presumably are less free to go

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to high tech companies founded by the researchers

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and more likely to flow into these large companies

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to be commercialized, through that method.

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So we found that these federal funding cuts have a large

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effect on individual researchers

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and what individual researchers do in specific,

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when you have less federal funding, they're less likely

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to found, high tech companies,

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they're more likely to patent

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and they're less likely to publish.

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And so the larger picture here is that this, both

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because it decreases funding, decreases people's output,

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but it shifts the way that this r

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and d is able to get out into the world

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and is able to be commercialized.

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So federal funding, as I said

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before, explicitly leaves it open for the universities

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and the researchers to, commercialize themselves,

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to found companies to sort of do

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what they want in, in that way.

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Whereas when the federal funding is cut

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and researchers shift to private funding, they

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now have their research outcomes go into these companies

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to be commercialized through these companies.

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And I don't think it's clear which one is a better way

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of commercialization.

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On the one hand, we believe that, you know,

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more innovative ideas are better situated in small companies

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that can really run with them.

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Uh, unlike the way large companies sort of.

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