"Public-private partnerships offer potentially important opportunities for pro-poor agricultural research in developing countries. Yet in the international agricultural research community-and with regard to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) itself-we see few...

Innovations are a key driver of long-term economic growth. There has been an explosion of patent filings in China in the past three decades. But empirical studies on the pattern of innovations at the firm level are rather scant primarily due to lack of firm-specific patent data. We have made...

The demand for extending intellectual property protection to agriculture in developing countries has met with counterclaims for granting farmers' rights. Developing countries are currently attempting to fulfill these demands by evolving new IPR regimes that simultaneously protect the rights of...

In a climate of rapid technological change, it is important to evaluate policies on the innovation incentives that result from the introduction of intellectual property rights as they relate to agricultural genetic resources. In this paper, we use a stylized model of cumulative innovation to...

As patents and other forms of intellectual property become more pervasive in the next generation of biotechnologies, designing polices and practices to ensure sufficient freedom to operate (i.e., the ability to practice or use an innovation) will be crucial for non-profit agencies in the...

Notwithstanding the ambiguous research and productivity promoting effects of plant variety protections (PVPs), even in developed countries, many developing countries have adopted PVPs in the past few years to comply with their Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)...

Since the 1970's, the worldwide capacity of genebanks for ex situ conservation of crop genetic resources has increased greatly. This has increased the accessibility of landraces and wild and weedy relatives to crop breeders; in situ conservation, though essential, is not an efficient means of...

This brief summarizes the book, Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late?, edited by Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott. The authors of the brief look at topics such as: International spillovers of public agricultural R&D; patterns of worldwide public...

"IFPRI and FANRPAN outlined and managed a highly participatory process involving high-level policymakers, senior representatives of a range of stakeholder agencies, and respected scientific leaders, who came together for an integrated series of roundtable discussions. The initiative is...

"This paper describes how governments and philanthropic donors could drive innovation through a new kind of technology contest. We begin by reviewing the history of technology prizes, which operate alongside private intellectual property rights and public R&D to accelerate and guide productivity...