The halo effect and technology licensing: The influence of institutional prestige on the licensing of university inventions

Sociologists and organizational theorists have long claimed that the processes of knowledge creation and distribution are fundamentally social. Following in this tradition, we explore the effect of institutional prestige on university technology licensing. Empirically, we examine the influence of university prestige on the annual rate of technology licensing by 102 universities from 1991–1998. We show that institutional prestige increases a university's licensing rate over and above the rate that is explained by the university's past licensing performance. Because licensing success positively impacts future invention production, we argue that institutional prestige leads to stratification in the creation and distribution of university-generated knowledge.