  The first-ever article published in Research Policy was Casimir's (1971)
advocacy of academic freedom in light of the industry's increasing influence on
research in universities. Half a century later, the literature attests to the
dearth of work on the role of academic freedom for innovation. To fill this
gap, we employ instrumental variable techniques to identify the impact of
academic freedom on the quantity (patent applications) and quality (patent
citations) of innovation output. The empirical evidence suggests that improving
academic freedom by one standard deviation increases patent applications and
forward citations by 41% and 29%, respectively. The results hold in a
representative sample of 157 countries over the 1900-2015 period. This research
note is also an alarming plea to policymakers: Global academic freedom has
declined over the past decade for the first time in the last century. Our
estimates suggest that the decline of academic freedom has resulted in a global
loss quantifiable with at least 4.0% fewer patents filed and 5.9% fewer patent
citations.
