Commissioned by the CGIAR Science Council and prepared as a Background Paper for the 2008 World Development Report of the World Bank.

Proponents tout the positive incentive-to-innovate effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs), while others maintain that the expanding subject matter and geographical extent of IPRs are stifling crop research, especially research and development (R&D) dealing with developing-country crop...

Despite the efforts of various economists and agricultural scientists in calling for more investments, funding for agricultural R&D has been stagnated for the last two decades in China. This will pose a great challenge for the China's agricultural sector. Productivity has leveled off, and...

There is potential for over-provision of environmental harms and under-provision of environmental benefits associated with GM crops. As a result, strong public regulation is needed to ensure that full social values are considered. However, one reason for opposition to GM crops is a lack of...

Hybrid rice, one of the viable and proven technologies has been considered as a new frontier to increase rice production for meeting growing demand for staple food in Bangladesh. Using farm survey data this paper examines comparative profitability of hybrid and inbred rice cultivation and...

Stocks of Australian wine, at an industry level, have considerably exceeded sales for many years. However, all varieties and regions are not the culprits of this oversupply. The mismatching of supply and demand can be attributed to a lack of adequate market information, particularly at the...

A multi-sectoral partial equilibrium model of the markets for two types of Australian grapes and wine (premium and non-premium) is developed to study the aggregate returns from different types of research and promotion investments by the industry and their distribution across actors in the...