The impact of money on science: Evidence from unexpected NCAA football outcomes – ScienceDirect
How productive are university research investments, and do the resulting pools of knowledge create valuable, downstream technology or simply accumulate in the ivory tower ? This paper uses unexpected NCAA athletic outcomes to vary research support to university faculty and estimate knowledge productivity. We find positive, significant effects of research expenditures on articles published and patents filed. Then, using data on university technology licensing income, we show that these investments produce large returns in real terms.