Agricultural research has transformed agriculture and in doing so contributed to the transformation of economies. Economic issues arise because agricultural research is subject to various market failures, because the resulting innovations and technological changes have important economic...

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...

Pierce’s Disease (PD) of grapevines costs more than $100 million per year, even with public control programs in place that cost $50 million per year (Tumber et al., 2012). If the PD Control Program ended, and the GWSS was distributed freely throughout California, the annual cost to the...

Reprinted in Journal of Wine Economics, Volume 6, Number 2, 2011, Pages 135–159

Over the past five decades in the United States both total medical expenditures and the proportion of medical expenditures financed with public funds have increased significantly. A substantial increase in the prevalence of obesity has contributed to this growth. In this study we measure the...

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