The determinants of academic spin-off creation by Italian universities

The aim of this work is to investigate the university level determinants of academic spin-off (ASO) firm creation in Italy. We are interested in particular in the relationship between university funding and the university propensity to create spin-offs, and test the effect of public and third-party funds on this tendency. We estimate the effect of several variables for the characteristics of the university and the context. In contrast to our expectations, results indicate that third-party funding does not exert an effect on the propensity of the university to generate ASO firms. Similarly, and in contrast to what the literature suggests, scientific productivity, context innovativeness and patenting experience also do not have a positive and significant effect on the propensity to generate spin-offs. We find that ASO creation is influenced by the amount of public income, by past experience in creating spin-offs and by the presence of a technology transfer office. This work contributes to our understanding of the differences between Italy and the Anglo-Saxon countries in relation to the phenomenon of ASO creation and has some important implications for policy.