Entrepreneurial Spillovers from Corporate R&D

Abstract

This paper documents that corporate R&D investment increases employee departures to entrepreneurship. We use U.S. Census data, and instrument for R&D with its tax credit-induced cost. The ideas or skills that spill into startups seem to benefit from focused, high-powered incentives; for example, R&D-induced startups are much more likely to receive venture capital. The effect also seems to reflect ideas or skills that are poor complements to the firm’s assets. As human capital is inalienable and portable, and startups are crucial to economic growth, R&D-induced labor reallocation to startups appears to be a novel channel of R&D spillovers.