When there are competing technologies or products with unknown payoffs an important question is which technology will prevail and whether technologies with different payoffs can coexist in the long run. In this paper, we use a social learning model with local interactions to study this question....

A methodology for measuring public agricultural research capital is developed and described for the first time, new public agricultural research capital measures for each of the 48 contiguous US states, 1970-1999, are presented, and a new econometric analysis of the contribution of public...

The aim of this paper is to discuss the co-evolution between agricultural biotechnology and biosafety process, with a special focus on Brazilian case. This rapid diffusion process has occurred in parallel with a high transaction cost process of regulation, combining local, territorial, national...

Theory, historiography and empirical evidence suggest that agriculture is the key to economic development. This paper examines the extent to which productivity advances in British agriculture in the period 1620-1850 were driven by technological progress. Measuring technology by patents and new...

When payoffs from different actions are unknown, agents use their own past experience as well as the experience of their neighbors to guide their current decision making. This paper develops a general framework to study the relationship between the structure of information flows and the process...

In this paper we aim at investigating the price-induced innovation hypothesis in Italian agriculture. We generalize the framework of analysis proposed by Peeters and Surry (2000). The generalization includes a short-run specification of the dual technology as well as a quadratic spline in a time...

The paper presents a dynamic model for the analysis of the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) strategy. In a context of increasing globalisation, both intersectoral and international technology spill-ins may greatly affect the NARS design, and this paper proposes an analytical...

This article deals with the role of public research in Italian agriculture during the period 1960 to 1995. A short-term specification of the GL cost function capable of accommodating quasi-fixed factors and variable returns is employed. Temporary equilibrium and scale economies are investigated...

This paper examines the impact that publicly funded agricultural research has on productivity in crop production within Thailand. It tests empirically the two hypotheses that, first, publicly funded research and development (R&D) in crop production is a significant determinant of total factor...

The Italian agriculture can be described as a technology taker sector dominated by suppliers. Technological spillover is the main source of technological change within the agricultural production processes. The Yale Technology Concordance (YTC} is applied to identify the innovations flow from...