Although there is increasing emphasis on targeting of improved technology towards poor and female farmers, few adoption studies assess the uptake of new practices by these groups in a comprehensive manner. In this study, community members used the wealth ranking method to identify the different...

The measurement of the impact of technical change has received significant attention within the economics literature. One popular method of quantifying this impact of technical change is the use of growth accounting index numbers. However, in a recent article Nelson and Pack (1999) criticise the...

Surveys on consumer acceptance of GM foods revealed differences in knowledge, risk perception and acceptance of GM foods in Japan, Norway, Spain, Taiwan and the United States. There were opponents and proponents of GM foods. However, even in the United States, one of the most supportive...

China is a key player in global agricultural markets, and the number one importer of U.S. soybeans and cotton, whereby soybeans and cotton are two of the main biotech commodities commercialized in the United States. As of 2005, 87% of soybeans and 79% of cotton planted in the U.S. were biotech....

The determinants of innovation and the role of intellectual property rights in different countries are not well understood. This paper estimates the determinants of innovation using a new panel dataset. It compares different panel estimation methods appropriate for finite size samples. Past R&D...

Increase in agricultural productivity is induced by public investment in research. Several studies have analyzed the impact of research investment at the national level but such analyses at the state or regional level are a few. The present study is an attempt to analyze the pattern and quantify...

The only commercial genetically modified (GM) subsistence food crop is white maize in South Africa, which was released in 2001/2. This paper reports on the performance of insect resistant (Bt) white maize grown by smallholders in Hlabisa, KwaZulu Natal, where the other development is minimum...

The Insect Resistant Maize for Africa (IRMA) project is currently developing Bt maize for Kenya. So far, Bt genes with resistance to Chilo partellus, Chilo orichalcociliellus, Eldana Sacharina, and Sesamia calamistis, four of the five major stemborers were successfully incorporated into elite...

A number of African countries experienced since the mid 1980s a process of market liberalization that was expected to increase smallholders' access to inputs and outputs markets through the entry of private players. The effect on production, through uptake of improved technologies is however...

This paper addresses the value of bioprospection for genetic resources (GR) and traditional knowledge (TK) from the South for industrial/research input. The focus is on a dynamic approach to contracting and property rights building upon insights from evolutionary institutional economics. Drawing...