Replaced with revised version of paper 07/22/11. Former Title: Revisiting the Returns to U.S. Public Agricultural Research: New Measures, Models, Results, and Interpretation

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...

Final (updated) version posted Dec. 1, 2014

This paper initiates development of a set of stylized facts concerning the structure of public support for national agricultural research systems (NARS) within a neoclassical political economy framework. The aim is to place public funding of NARS in the broader context of the overall level of...

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.

Econometric studies of the effects of research on productivity have typically imposed arbitrary restrictions on the length and shape of the R&D on productivity and the estimated rate of return to research. This paper argues that the useful stock of public knowledge depreciates, if at all, only...