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Abstract Research universities rely heavily on external funding to advance knowledge and generate economic growth. In the USA, tens of billions of dollars are spent each year on research and development with the federal government contributing over half of these funds. Yet a decline in relative federal funding highlights the role of other funders and their varying contractual terms. Specifically, nonfederal funders provide lower recovery of indirect costs. Using project-level university-sponsored research administrative records from four institutions, we examine indirect cost recovery. We find significant variation in the amount of indirect funding recovered—both across and within funders, as well as to different academic fields within a university. The distribution of sponsors in the overall research funding portfolio also impacts indirect cost recovery. The recovery variation has important implications for the sustainability and cross-subsidization of the university research enterprise. Together, our results show where universities are under-recovering indirect costs. 

This article utilizes a unique database (PLACE, the PLatform for Advancing Community Economies) to explore relationships between founders’ prior work experiences and the outcomes of their entrepreneurial firms. The authors capture and compare multiple, intersecting, often overlapping, prior work experiences and assess their differential interactions within a local ecosystem. They augment existing empirical research, which has looked most closely at the impact of prior employment on firm financing and survival, to include labor market effects. Results show important differences in firm-level employment outcomes across prior work experiences, with an advantage accruing to founders with prior work experience in local life science firms.