Using the farm tractor as a case study, I show that lags in technology diffusion arise along two distinct margins, which I term scale and scope. Though tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much...

The Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This chapter uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation....

Implementation of suitable innovation packages into cropping systems is required to address the issues of food security and improvement of the crop yield in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, quantification of the effects of innovation packages such as increase in fertilizer application rates,...

Ethiopia is endowed with significant livestock resources and holds the largest livestock population in Africa, estimated at around 60 million cattle, 60 million sheep and goats, 52 million chickens, 4.5 million camels, 10 million bee colonies and 7.2 million equines. The livestock production and...

Some entry barriers in agricultural and agro-processing value chains, particularly for smallholder farmers and small/medium-sized processors, can be overcome with innovation and technology adoption. Technologies and innovation in these sectors have been both radical and incremental, ranging...

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...

This study aims to narrate the context that shaped the competition assessment of the last wave of mega-mergers in the agrochem sector. It first focuses on the propertization of nature and the shrinking of the public domain, before exploring the important game-changer of the gene-editing...

This paper considers those sectors of the economy that operate under the same regimes of rewarding private innovators as others, but differ in that they face recurring problems of resistance, as occur in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. This recurrence originates in the natural...

We examine whether the financial strength of companies, in particular, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is causally linked to the award of a public procurement contract (PP), especially in the environmentally friendly green area (GPP). For this purpose, we build a combined procurement...