Crop research has undergone a major transformation in North America and many other parts of the word. The introduction of biotechnology and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) alter the nature of research products, which in turn changes the structure of the agricultural research industry from perfectly competitive to imperfectly competitive. The implications of these changes are not fully understood. The objective of this thesis is to develop a broader understanding of how biotechnology, changes in IPRs and the resulting changes in industry structure have affected private and public incentives for agricultural research. The specific goals include development of an analytical framework to examine the incentives for private R&D expenditure, and the spillovers between basic and applied research and between private and public firms. To achieve the objective of this study, a stochastic analytical model within an imperfect competitive framework was developed. Specifically, what is developed is a three-stage search/imperfect competition model characterized by two research firms developing and selling differentiated products to producers who are heterogeneous with respect to some attributes. Agricultural research is modeled with explicit recognition of the search process, which allows us to recognize research as a stochastic process with sporadic outcomes and to explicitly model the interaction between basic and applied research. The findings of this study are mainly in the form of propositions. It was shown that basic public research "crowds in" applied private research while applied public research "crowds out" applied private research. The current technology level and the cost of the experimentation negatively affect private investment, while the price of the final product positively affects the private investment. Moreover, it is concluded that, the greater the product heterogeneity, the higher the price charged with the same amount of R&D. Finally, it is shown that the increase in IPR's and the firm's market size has a positive effect on the private firm's amount of R&D investment. The econometric analysis, using data from the canola industry, provides empirical evidence to support the analytical framework and the proposition derived in this study. The study also draws a number of policy implications from the derived propositions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-10212004-002832 |
| Date | 01 January 2001 |
| Creators | Malla, Stavroula |
| Contributors | Gray, Richard S. |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-10212004-002832 |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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