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...

Commissioned by the CGIAR Science Council and prepared as a Background Paper for the 2008 World Development Report of the World Bank.

Over the past 50 years and longer, the supply of food commodities has grown faster than the effective market demand, in spite of increasing population and per capita incomes. Consequently, the real (deflated) prices of food commodities have steadily trended down. The past increases in...

Some studies have reported a slowdown in U.S. farm productivity growth, but the prevalent view among economists is to reject or downplay the slowdown hypothesis, implying that the rates of productivity growth experienced over the past half century can be projected forward. We set out to resolve...

A production function approach is used to estimate growth in farm productivity in the Australian wool industry from an estimated level of expenditure on wool production R & D. A market equilibrium model of the wool industry is then used to measure the share of total benefits from this...

Estimated rates of return to research are distorted by problems of attributing the credit for particular research results, or for particular research-induced productivity increases, among research expenditures undertaken at different times, in different places, and by different agencies. A...

The effects of functional forms for supply and demand on the size and distribution of the returns to research are examined under a range of forms of competition. Under perfect competition, the choice of functional form is relatively unimportant for the estimation of research benefits. Under...

We use newly constructed data to model and measure agricultural productivity growth and the returns to public agricultural research conducted in Uruguay over the period 1961–2010. We pay attention specifically to the role of levy-based funding under INIA, which was established in 1990. Our...

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...

A model of the Australian orange growing industry to explain changes in plantings, removals, the number and age composition of trees and orange production is developed and estimated. Most of the variation in plantings is explained by the expected profitability of growing oranges, the current...