This chapter investigates the extent to which agricultural innovations draw on ideas originating outside of agriculture. We identify a large set of US patents for agricultural technologies granted between 1976 and 2018. To measure knowledge spillovers to these patents, we rely on three proxies:...

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 chapter investigates the extent to which agricultural innovations draw on ideas originating outside of agriculture. We identify a large set of US patents for agricultural technologies granted between 1976 and 2018. To measure knowledge spillovers to these patents, we rely on three proxies:...