The Economics of Agricultural R&D

Julian Alston, Philip Pardey, Jennifer S. James and Matthew A. Anderson ()
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Matthew A. Anderson: Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics, University of California, Davis, California 95616

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2009, vol. 1, issue 1, 537-566

Abstract: 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 consequences for net income and its distribution, and because the consequences are difficult to discern and attribute. Economists have developed models and measures of the economic consequences of agricultural R&D and related policies in contributions that relate to a very broad literature ranging across production economics, development economics, industrial organization, economic history, welfare economics, political economy, econometrics, and so on. A key general finding is that the social rate of return to investments in agricultural R&D has been generally high. Specific findings differ depending on methods and modeling assumptions, particularly assumptions concerning the research lag distribution, the nature of the research-induced technological change, and the nature of the markets for the affected commodities.

Keywords: rates of return; attribution; R&D lags; spillovers; distribution; treadmill (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q11 Q16 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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