This article explores demand-enhancing check-off programs and how such programs may influence both private programs as well as industry market structure. Under duopoly, a firm may increase its sales through privately funding product quality improvements. However, such endogenous sunk costs may...

We develop a monopolistic competition model to investigate effects of international technological convergence on factor rewards, output composition, and welfare. Comparative static analysis indicates technological convergence improves the follower's-but impairs the leader's-international...

From the late 1950s through mid-1990s, productivity growth in U.S. grain milling and feed manufacturing has been consistently strong and positive. In grain milling, approximately 15% of the growth is due to size economies. Technical change has been capital-using, increasingly material-saving,...

We examine sources of productivity in bioscience research and graduate training in U.S. universities. For this purpose, we first identify the scientific publications cited on agricultural biotechnology patents, and then trace the citations back to the universities producing the cited research....

Many argued during the NAFTA debate that trade liberalization would favor Mexican over U.S. food processors, especially because of lax environmental laws south of the border. We find through an examination of profit functions that productivity growth in Mexico has outstripped that in the United...

Life-science research has shifted rapidly from the public to the private sector, raising questions about government’s remaining role. We shed light on the issue by employing a dynamic investment-response model to examine the public’s impact on industry life-science research effort and...

We develop a monopolistic competition model to investigate effects of international technological convergence on factor rewards, output composition, and welfare. Comparative static analysis indicates technological convergence improves the follower's—but impairs the leader's—international...