This paper considers those sectors of the economy that operate under the same regimes of rewarding private innovators as others, but differ in that they face recurring problems of resistance, as occur in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. This recurrence originates in the natural...

Over the past 30 years, industrial plantation forests have become a major supplier of industrial wood. There are several reasons for this, including the improved economics of planted forests due to biotechnological innovations, the increases in natural forest wood costs due to increasing...

Adequate public research capacity is key to the appropriate development of biotechnology, including genetically modified (GM) crops. While commercial crops can be introduced without intensive local research (i.e. insect resistant GM cotton), introducing products of public research depend on...

This paper examines the economic determinants and impacts of agricultural research, particularly biotechnology research, with a view to understanding the potential of agricultural biotechnology to address the needs of the poor in developing countries. It surveys public and private agricultural...

The pattern of crop genetic diversity has changed over the past two centuries with the modernization of agriculture, accelerating with the advent of the green revolution. Since the green revolution, the locus of agricultural research has shifted from the public to the private sector. The growing...

The majority of biotech research and almost all of the commercialization of genetically engineered crops has been done by private firms based in industrialized countries. The dominance of the private sector in biotechnology research and product development has raised concern in developing...

Global adoption of transgenic crops reached 67.7 million hectares in 2003 from 2.8 million in 1996. Delivery has occurred almost entirely through the private sector and adoption has been rapid in areas where the crops addressed serious production constraints and where farmers had access to the...