Patents were categorized as life sciences based on the categories
and subcategories in Hall, Jaffe, and Trajtenberg (2003, pp. 452-53).
Patents were chosen in the NBER subcategories 33 (biotechnology as part
of the drugs and medical category), 61 (agriculture, husbandry, and food
as part of the "other" category), and 11 (agriculture, food,
and textiles, as a part of the chemical category). Within these
subcategories, some U.S. patent classes did not fit with a life sciences
definition, mostly because they were classes that had agricultural, food
processing, or textile machinery. Therefore, patents in six U.S. patent
classes (8, 19, 43, 99, 131, 442) were dropped. The resulting database
includes patents in the following U.S. patent classes: 47, 56, 71, 111,
119, 127, 426, 435, 449, 452, 460, 504, 800.
Relative citations for patents were generated by year and by patent
class comparing each individual patent to the universe of all patents in
that class (whether owned by universities or not). A university's
patent count for that year is then adjusted by the ratio of number of
citations received to the expected citations for that portfolio:
Quality Adjusted Patents
= #patents x #citations received/E(citations),
where the number of expected citations, E(citations) is calculated
as the number of citations that same portfolio of patents would receive
if each patent received the average citation rate for its U.S. patent
class for that year.
Articles
Article data were culled from the ISI-Web of Science database based
on universities included in their "University Science
Indicators" and categories established in that same document. The
Web of Science includes only the major journals in a field as identified
by impact factors, such that our article measures necessarily cut out
articles written for lesser journals. In addition the citation measures
are only for citations in other major journals. This truncation, we
believe, serves our purposes of adding a subtle quality measure even to
our quantity measures.
The categories were chosen based on the journals that were included
and the match of those journals with both the patent and funding data.
They are: agriculture, biology & biochemistry, ecology/environment,
molecular biology & genetics, microbiology, multidisciplinary, plant
& animal sciences. While most of the categories are self
explanatory, it is worth noting that the "Multidisciplinary"
designation is used for major scientific journals such as Science,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Nature. While this
inevitably adds some noise to the data, we thought it better than
"punishing" universities that regularly publish in the top
journals.
Relative citations for articles were generated by disciplinary
category and by year as with patents. They are compared to citations of
other articles assigned to the universities in the sample, rather than
to all articles. The same techniques of generating relative citations
used for patents were used for articles.
Cost Data
Cost data (life science research and development costs, faculty
salaries) were culled from the NSF Webcaspar. Life sciences combined
NSF's categories of "biological sciences" and
"agricultural sciences." These categories explicitly excluded
medical sciences costs.
NSF provides the following definitions for those at universities
who fill out their survey: R&D for purposes of this survey is the
same as "organized research" as defined in Section B.1.b. of
OMB Circular A-21 (revised). It includes all R&D activities of an
institution that are separately budgeted and accounted for. R&D
includes both "sponsored research" activities (sponsored by
federal and nonfederal agencies and organizations) and "university
research" (separately budgeted under an internal application of
institutional funds).
Research is systematic study directed toward fuller knowledge or
understanding of the subject studied. Research is classified as either
basic or applied, according to the objectives of the investigator.
Development is systematic use of the knowledge or understanding
gained from research, directed toward the production of useful
materials, devices, systems, or methods, including design and
development of prototypes and processes.
The faculty salary data were not collected in 1984, 1987, 1988, and
1989 and so were imputed for those years based on linear trends. The
estimation results for the key parameters of interest were not sensitive
to different methods of imputation of faculty salary for those years.
Input costs
Faculty salary data come from the NSF surveys. The staff wage is
measured as the average salary for the county in which the university is
located and comes from the bureau of labor statistics.
Extension FTE
We use the data provided by Ahearn, Lee, and Bottom (2002), which
measures for each state the number of extension full-time equivalents in
the state extension system.
Universities included in the sample
Arizona State U., Baylor College, Boston U., Brandeis U., Brown U.,
Caltech, Carnegie Mellon U., Colorado State U., Columbia U., Cornell U.,
Dartmouth College, Emory U., Florida State U., Georgetown U., Harvard
U., Indiana U., Iowa State U., Johns Hopkins U., Lehigh U., Louisiana
State U., Loyola U., Michigan State U., MIT, N. Carolina State U., New
Mexico State U., New York U., Northwestern U., Ohio State U., Oregon
Health Sciences U., Oregon State U., Penn State U., Princeton U., Purdue
U., Rice U., Rutgers State U., Stanford U., Syracuse U., Texas A&M
U., Tufts U., Tulane U., U. Alabama, U. Alaska, U. Arizona, U. C.
Berkeley, U. C. Davis, U. C. Irvine, U. C. Los Angeles, U. C. Riverside,
U. C. San Diego, U. C. Santa Barbara, U. C. Santa Cruz, U. Chicago, U.
Cincinnati, U. Colorado, U. Connecticut, U. Delaware, U. Florida, U.
Georgia, U. Hawaii, U. Illinois Urbana, U. Iowa, U. Kansas, U. Kentucky,
U. Maryland Baltimore, U. Maryland College Park, U. Miami, U. Michigan,
U. Minnesota, U. Missouri, U. N. Carolina Chapel Hill, U. Nebraska, U.
New Hampshire, U. New Mexico, U. Oregon, U. Penn, U. Pittsburgh, U.
Rochester, U. So. Calif, U. Tennessee, U. Texas Austin, U. Texas
Houston, U. Utah, U. Vermont, U. Virginia, U. Washington, U. Wisconsin
Madison, Utah State U., Vanderbilt U., Virginia Polytech Inst, W.
Virginia U., Wake Forest U., Washington State U., Washington U., Wayne
State U., Yale U., Yeshiva U.
The authors are grateful for the funding provided by the Food
Systems Research Group, a USDA IFAFS consortium grant, and USDA-NRI
grant no. 2004-35400-14937. Thanks also to Jean-Paul Chavas and David
Zilberman for helpful suggestions, and Hsiu-Hui Chang, Hooman Dabidian,
Eric Finnin, Seth Gitter, and Nick Magnan for data work. Any remaining
errors are the authors'.
[Received August 2004; accepted May 2006.]
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