Intellectual property rights, technology diffusion, and agricultural development: Cross-country evidence

David Spielman and Xingliang Ma ()

No 1345, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: The role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has been extensively debated in the literature on technology transfers and agricultural production in developing countries. However, few studies offer cross-country evidence on how IPRs affect yield growth, for example, by incentivizing private-sector investment in cultivar improvement. We address this knowledge gap by testing technology diffusion patterns for six major crops using a unique dataset for the period 1961–2010 and an Arellano–Bond linear dynamic panel-data estimation approach. Findings indicate that both biological and legal forms of IPRs tend to promote yield gap convergence between developed and developing countries, although effects vary between crops.

Keywords: technology transfer; intellectual property rights; diffusion of information; productivity; developing countries; agricultural development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff, nep-gro, nep-ipr, nep-pr~, nep-knm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/149645

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1345

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().