Recent trends in farm productivity and food prices raise concerns about whether the era of global agricultural abundance is over. Agricultural R&D is a crucial determinant of agricultural productivity and production, and therefore food prices and poverty. In this paper we review past and present...

Case studies of four products - chlordane, aciflourfen, fluoridamidmefluidide, and Heliothis NPV -- will be used to examine some of the impacts of regulation on pesticide innovation. Regulatory effects will be illustrated by reviewing the R&D history of particular products.

Prices of basic food staples and feed crops have soared in recent years, renewing concerns about the ability of global food supplies to meet the projected growth in aggregate demand. Notwithstanding these concerns, and apparently at odds with a vast body of economic evidence reporting...

The level and distribution of the social benefits from public investment in Canadian wheat breeding research and extension activities are examined for the period 1946 to 1979. In addition, average and marginal rates of return are calculated. The results reveal that society has benefited...

Proponents tout the positive incentive-to-innovate effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs), while others maintain that the expanding subject matter and geographical extent of IPRs are stifling crop research, especially research and development (R&D) dealing with developing-country crop...

New radical general purpose technologies have been the drivers of economic growth in the United States economy in recent economic history. In this paper I review the role of military and defense related research, technology development, and procurement in the development of the aircraft, nuclear...

In general, reported rates of return to agricultural R&D are high, but questions have been raised about upward biases in the evidence. Among the reasons for this bias, insufficient attention to attribution aspects-matching of research benefits and costs-is a pervasive problem, the magnitude of...

A number of very careful econometric studies have been interpreted as showing that publicly funded research and development conducted by private firms has had little discernable impact on firm level profits or productivity. In contrast historical studies have shown that military and...