  This study is about public-private research collaboration. In particular, we
want to measure how the propensity of academics to collaborate with their
colleagues from private firms varies over time and whether the typical profile
of such academics change. Furthermore, we investigate the change of the weights
of main drivers underlying the academics' propensity to collaborate with
industry. In order to achieve such goals, we apply an inferential model on a
dataset of professors working in Italian universities in two subsequent
periods, 2010-2013 and 2014-2017. Results can be useful for supporting the
definition of policies aimed at fostering public-private research
collaborations, and should be taken into account when assessing their
effectiveness afterwards.
