Data and Code for: "How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges"

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Michael Andrews, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Code			05/17/2022 03:48:PM
Data			11/14/2021 11:15:AM
Codebook.pdf	application/pdf	257.8 KB	11/14/2021 05:37:AM
LICENSE.txt	text/plain	15.6 KB	11/14/2021 05:37:AM
README.pdf	application/pdf	356.3 KB	05/17/2022 11:41:AM

Project Citation:

Andrews, Michael. Data and Code for: “How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges.” Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-04-07. https://doi.org/10.3886/E154561V1

Project Description

Summary: This is data and code for "How Do Institutions of Higher Education Affect Local Invention? Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges." In this project, I use narrative historical data on site selection decisions for a subset of U.S. colleges to identify "runner-up" locations that were strongly considered to become the sites of new colleges. Using runner-up counties as counterfactuals in a difference-in-difference model, I find that establishing a college causes 62% more patents per year. Linking patents to novel college yearbook data reveal that only 12% of patents in a college's county came from that college’s alumni or faculty. I find only small differences in patenting between establishing colleges and establishing other institutions, as well as between colleges with different focuses on technical fields.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Innovation; Higher Education; Patents; Economic History; Natural Experiments

JEL Classification:
      I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
      N00 Economic History: General
      O30 Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights: General
      O34 Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
      R58 Regional Development Planning and Policy

Geographic Coverage: U.S.

Time Period(s): 1836 – 2010

Universe: 174 counties (in the baseline sample) that were either winning or runner-up locations to receive a new college between 1839 and 1954. For each county, data on patenting activities, colleges and college yearbooks, census data, and other county-level data from numerous sources are used.

Methodology

Data Source: See README for more detail.

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-04-07]

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