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  • P-ISSN 2586-2995
  • E-ISSN 2586-4130
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KDI Journal of Economic Policy. Vol. 40, No. 4, November 2018, pp. 23-45

https://doi.org/10.23895/kdijep.2018.40.4.23

× KDI Open Access is a program of fully open access journals to facilitate the widest possible dissemination of high-quality research. All research articles published in KDI JEP are immediately, permanently and freely available online for everyone to read, download and share in terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Effects of Technology Transfer Policies on the Technical Efficiency of Korean University TTOs

JAEPIL HAN

Author & Article History

Manuscript received 12 June 2018; revision received 19 June 2018; accepted 13 September 2018.

Abstract

The Korean government has provided various policy devices to boost technology transfers between academia and industry since the establishment of the Technology Transfer Promotion Act in 2000. Along with the enactment of the law, the Korean government mandated the establishment of a technology transfer office at national and public universities and encouraged technology transfer activities. Despite the quantitative expansion of technology transfer offices (TTOs), operational inefficiency was brought up. As a supplementary policy, the Korean government implemented a line of projects to support the labor and business expenses of leading TTOs. This research questions whether the project greatly affected the technical efficiency of TTOs. We analyze publicly available university panel data from 2007 to 2015 using a one-step stochastic frontier analysis. The results suggest that the program was marginally effective at shifting the technical efficiency distribution to the right on average, but it failed to maximize its impact by diversifying the policy means based on targets. The marginal effects of the program on technical efficiency differ according to the research capability and size of each school. We also compare technical efficiency against the licensing income at the start and end of the program. Technical efficiency increased for the leading TTOs, and both measures show improvements for unsupported TTOs. Our empirical results imply that diversifying the program for universities with different characteristics may have improved the effectiveness of the policy.

Keywords

Technology Transfer, Technology Transfer Office, Efficiency, Stochastic Frontier Analysis

JEL Code

L24, O32, O38, I28

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