China's Bayh-Dole Act And Technology Transfer:Evidence From 211 Universities

Currently,innovation has become the key driver of economic growth,but scientific and technical outcomes which lead to innovation can effectively promote economic and social development only if they are successfully commercialized into new products or services.Hence,the low conversion rate of scientific and technological knowledge has always been an issue that has plagued China's science and technology reform.To promote the transformation of technology,the Chinese government has implemented many reforms,and among them,the "Several Provisions on Intellectual Property Management of Research Achievements of National Research Projects" launched in 2002 is a landmark reform.The "Provisions" decentralizes intellectual property rights from country to universities and allows them to assign benefits from commercialization which is a Chinese version of Bayh-Dole Act.From the perspective of academic research,many scholars found that the Bayh-Dole Act promoted the transfer of technology in colleges and universities,while whether China's "Regulations" effectively has promoted the technology transfer in universities is still an unsolved problem.Hence,this article attempts to make an exploratory response to this issue.We use the continuous DID model and university papers and patents data to evaluate the causal effect of the regulation in 211 universities in China.The study finds that the "Regulations" bring about an increase in the number of patents in 211 colleges.When the university's knowledge accumulation(5-year knowledge reserve)increased by one unit,the number of patents would increase by 0.001%.This effect is not higher in the top 985 colleges than other universities.In comprehensive universities,the growth of patents will be smaller than in science and engineering universities.Based on the policy evaluation,we believe that it is an effective policy to give more freedom to universities in technology transfer.