Notwithstanding the ambiguous research and productivity promoting effects of plant variety protections (PVPs), even in developed countries, many developing countries have adopted PVPs in the past few years to comply with their Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)...

Worldwide, the number of genebanks and the amount of seed stored in them has increased substantially over the past few decades. Most attention is focused on the likely benefits from conservation, but conserving germplasm involves costs whose nature and magnitude are largely unknown. In this...

The study attempts to measure the total benefits from rice varietal improvement research in China and India using variety adoption and performance data over the last two decades. It then uses genetic or pedigree information to partition the total benefits between these two countries and IRRI....

"We examine access to, use of, and participation in decisions on improved water supply in the Volta basin of Ghana, one of the first countries to introduce a community-based approach to rural water supply on a large scale. While 71 percent of the households interviewed have access to improved...

In a climate of rapid technological change, it is important to evaluate policies on the innovation incentives that result from the introduction of intellectual property rights as they relate to agricultural genetic resources. In this paper, we use a stylized model of cumulative innovation to...

When a new technology consists of sequences of innovations that culminate in a final consumer product, the balance between successive innovators is one of the main concerns in the design of the patent system. While intertemporal aspects of incentive are critical in this environment of sequential...

The lack of ex-ante evaluation of germplasm in genebanks has been the single most prevalent and long-standing complaint of plant breeders about the management of genebanks. Advances in biotechnology offer the possibility of faster, cheaper, and more efficient evaluation methodologies. Will these...

"Plant transformation research has achieved outstanding progress in the development of transgenic crops over the past decades, and the research results have been spread through journal publications and patents. With the recent emergence of stronger intellectual property rights, investments in...

Agricultural research and development has stimulated enormous increases in agricultural productivity in the twentieth century. Now, in response to common pressures, countries the world over are changing how they manage and pay for agricultural R&D. Paying for Agricultural Productivity reviews...

Technological advances developed through R&D have supplied the world with not only more food, but better food. This report looks at issues raised by this changing environment for agricultural productivity, agricultural R&D, and natural resource management.