This study measures the amount of agricultural research engaged in maintenance research for commodities and non-commodities. The percentage of commodity based maintenance research has risen from roughly 35% in 1986 to 41% in 2008. The percentage of non-commodity based agricultural research is...

Jonathan Kydd's analysis of the history of maize research in Malawi argues successfully that the reasons for the low rate of adoption of high yielding maize varieties lie in an insufficient appreciation of local processing and storage requirements. The analysis, however, raises further...

• By 2050, global agricultural demand is projected to grow by 70-100 percent due to population growth, energy demands, and higher incomes in developing countries. Meeting this demand from existing agricultural resources will require raising global agricultural total factor productivity (TFP)1...

To increase the efficiency of the public agricultural R&D system, expanded use of competitive grants to fund state institutions has been advocated. This paper characterizes different funding instruments and empirically assesses the effects of changes in mechanism use. Factors associated with...

This publication, through its focus on maize production in drought stressed areas of developing countries, explores economic, research, and policy issues related to maize agriculture in marginal areas of the developing world generally. Key questions in the debate over agriculture in marginal vs....

Intellectual property rights such as patents protect new inventions from imitation and competition. Patents' major objective is to provide incentives for invention, sacrificing short-term market efficiency for long-term economic gains. Although patents are primarily granted to private firms,...

This paper synthesizes the evidence on cereal crop productivity in developing countries over the past 30 years and looks at future prospects for productivity growth. For more than three decades we have witnessed the phenomenal growth of cereal crop productivity in the developing world. Termed...

This study makes use of data on wheat production in the Punjab of Pakistan from 1979 to 1985 to 1) examine patterns of varietal diversity in farmers' fields both at the regional and district levels and 2) identify how and in what ways genetic resources have contributed to wheat productivity and...

Sources of yield growth in wheat are investigated based on a stylized framework of technical change. Evidence suggests that the relative contribution of input intensification to yield growth has diminished in recent years and is likely to continue to decline in the future. One potential source...