This paper examines Chinese pesticide firms’ use and perceptions of various means of intellectual property (IP) protection in protecting their innovations, using a unique dataset from 97 pesticide firms surveyed in 2008. These firms rate Chinese patents as quite effective in protecting...

This paper uses conditional quantile regression to analyze the effects of genetically modified (GM) seed technology and management on production risk in agriculture, with an application to the distribution of corn yield in Wisconsin. Using the certainty equivalent (CE) as a welfare measure, our...

There is a large literature which investigates the relationship between market concentration and innovation. It is difficult to find a suitable measure for innovative output. We use a rich dataset based on university trials of corn hybrids to estimate, using fixed effects, a production function....

This paper investigates the pricing of differentiated products in a vertical sector, with a focus on the role of industry concentration. We propose concentration indices that extend the classical Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) to include vertical structures that manage differentiated products....

We analyze the rate of survival of hybrid seed corn in the U.S. market between 2000 and 2007 and find that product characteristics and market structures have significant impacts. The results suggest that survival rates depend on spillover effects of learning regarding genetically modified seeds...

We investigate the market and firm-specific factors that may impact firms’ product choices in the U.S. biotech corn seed market. Specifically, we estimate how the competition effects, the conglomeration effect, the similarity effect, and other market shifters influence firms’ variety choices...

China, a country developing at unprecedented levels, has experienced drastic changes throughout its recent economic history. Of primary interest is the continuing development and improvement of the rural agricultural sector, with even the slightest changes in this sector having dramatic ripple...

While China's economic reform has brought about significant economic growth, there is a considerable debate about the impact of such market-oriented reform on income and welfare distributions. This paper examines the changes in income and welfare distributions in urban China from 1981 to 1998...

Recent agronomic research finds that economically optimal seeding densities have likely increased for many Midwestern corn farmers as a result of genetic improvements including new GM traits such as Bt corn and herbicide tolerance. We derive a per acre demand model for hybrid seed corn to...

The purpose of the research in this paper is to investigate the impact of differentiated vertical strategies by agricultural biotechnology firms in the U.S. cottonseed market. The model advances the measurement of industry concentration to consider substitution/complementarity relationships...