Czarnitzki, Dirk <br/><br/>
University spin-offs and the performance premium 
Czarnitzki, Dirk. 
 -  2014 
 - 309-320 
<br/><br/> The creation of spin-off companies is often promoted as a desirable mechanism for transferring knowledge and technologies from research organizations to the private sector for commercialization. In the promotion process, policymakers typically treat these university spin-offs like industry start-ups. However, when university spin-offs involve an employment transition by a researcher from the not-for-profit sector, the creation of a university spin-off is likely to impose a higher social cost than the creation of an industry start-up. To offset this higher social  cost, university spin-offs must produce a larger stream of social benefits than industry start-ups, a performance premium. This paper outlines the arguments explaining why the social costs of entrepreneurship are likely to be higher for academic entrepreneurs, and empirically investigates the existence of a performance premium using a sample of German start-up companies. We find that university spin-offs exhibit a performance premium of 3.4 % points higher employment growth over industry start-ups. The analysis also shows that the performance premium varies across types of academic entrepreneurs and founders 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>Social Capital<br/>Human Capital<br/>University Spin-Off Policy<br/>Open Science<br/> Technology Transfer<br/>Firm Performance<br/>Start-Ups<br/>Academic Entrepreneurship<br/>Spin-Off Entrepreneurship