Technology and innovation play an increasingly important role in the economic development of both developed and developing countries. We investigate how policy and market factors influence firms’ (or other potential innovators’) decisions on innovation or imitation by developing a conceptual...

Private R&D is a major source of innovation and productivity growth in agriculture worldwide. This paper examines trends and determinants of agricultural R&D in China. Results show that while the public sector monopolized agricultural research until recently, private agricultural R&D has grown...

In Malawi, maize is the major crop and food staple. Given limited off-farm employment opportunities, much-needed increases in household income for improving food security must come from gains in agricultural productivity through better technology and more profitable crops. In the past, hybrid...

In Senegal, one of the highest rice import-dependent countries in Sub-Saharian Africa, double cropping is recommended in the new national program for the Great Offensive for Food and Abundance (GOANA) to boost rice production. This target impels the respect of cropping calendar by using improved...

The article uses the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) to estimate the population potential adoption rates of New Rice for Africa (NERICA) varieties in Nigeria when awareness of the new varieties and access to their seed are not constrained to farmers. It thus extends previous works in the...

We apply a program evaluation technique to data obtained from rural Kenya to assess the patterns of adoption of improved pigeonpea varieties. The sample adoption rate of improved pigeonpea is found to be 36% while potential adoption rate is estimated at 48%. The adoption gap resulting from the...

This paper examines the informational origin of the low adoption rates of modern agricultural technologies in smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that a large part of these low rates can be explained by the fact that many smallholder farmers are unaware of the existence of...

There has been considerable debate but little empirical analysis among academics, policy makers, and civil society about whether intellectual property rights would induce private research in developing countries. China passed its plant variety protection act (PVPA) in 1997 which allowed us to do...

This paper shows that the observed sample adoption rate does not consistently estimate the population adoption rate even if the sample is random. It is proved that instead the sample adoption rate is a consistent estimate of the population joint exposure and adoption rate, which does not inform...