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Full-Text Articles in Agricultural and Resource Economics

Intellectual Property Institutions For Plant Breeding, Richard K. Perrin, Lilyan Fulginiti Oct 2007

Intellectual Property Institutions For Plant Breeding, Richard K. Perrin, Lilyan Fulginiti

Lilyan E. Fulginiti Publications

Intellectual property rights for crop plant material should in principle increase social welfare by increasing private research investments to a level closer to the social optimum. In the US, plant patents were first introduced in 1930 by legislation that applied only to asexually reproduced plants. This was followed in 1970 by the weaker plant breeders' rights legislation (PBR) for sexually reproduced plants. Judicial decisions in 1980 and 1985, however, extended much stronger utility patent protection to plant materials. Here we examine theoretical welfare implications of weak PBR vs strong utility patents in a North-South context of technology transfer in agriculture …


Institutions And Agricultural Productivity In Mercosur, Preeti Bharati, Lilyan Fulginiti Oct 2007

Institutions And Agricultural Productivity In Mercosur, Preeti Bharati, Lilyan Fulginiti

Lilyan E. Fulginiti Publications

We revisit earlier estimates of agricultural productivity in original Mercosur member countries and later associates: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, for 1972-2002. We estimate a translog frontier production function and revise our earlier estimates as well as those of others that indicated declining agricultural productivity. We find that the average rate for the region was a strong 2.25 percent. All the member countries experienced positive agricultural productivity growth for the sample period with Brazil being the fastest gainer. Institutions such as investments in public health and in public agricultural R&D, as well as an …