Growth in agriculture depends on many things but one of the most important is investment in agricultural research. Decision making in the agricultural research policy area can only be aided by access to better information. This article overviews a recent endeavor to move policy dialogue beyond...

Some hypotheses about the timing of farmers becoming aware of an innovation and the subsequent decision to use that innovation are derived from a recently developed, decision-theoretic model of the adoption process. They are tested using empirical evidence on the time taken by early adopters of...

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...

Transgenic crops are relatively new technologies being adopted rapidly in the United States and in a few other countries. The economic impacts of these technologies have, thus far, been estimated in a piecemeal fashion. The purpose of this study was to collect and characterize the economic...

Economic analysis of the process of technical change has often involved macro-level studies of its causes and consequences. Relatively little attention has been given to the, more fundamental knowledge generation process itself. This stems in large part from the real difficulties of obtaining...

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...