This article deals with the impact of legislation in the seed sector on incentives for variety creation. The first category of rules consists in intellectual property rights and is intended to address a problem of sequential innovation and R&D investments. The second category concerns commercial...

This book contributes fresh theoretical and empirical evidence on competitiveness and growth in connection with the commitment made by European leaders at the Lisbon Summit in 2000 to ‘render the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy in the world by 2010,...

This article deals with the incidence of consumers? heterogeneity on the formation of hedonic price functions with a focus on the emergence of market segmentation. Two major points are outlined: (i) in the presence of group-wise heterogeneity, consumers are endogenously gathered on intervals of...

The article highlights the role of heterogeneity in the formation of hedonic prices. The article distinguishes between continuous and groupwise heterogeneity. The distinction helps understanding two important points. First, the analysis of market equilibrium with groupwise heterogeneity makes...