Institutional Economics: A Review of Theories and Practices in Agricultural Development (original) (raw)
Related papers
Essays on agricultural research investment
2002
This dissertation addresses three questions regarding investments in agricultural research and development (R&D): why, how much, and why not more? The economics literature sees profit as the principal incentive to investing in agricultural R&D. However, this profit motive is constrained by many factors, which makes it quite complicated to detect a direct link between R&D investment and impact. Conceptually, this link could be captured by an R&D opportunity curve, which links the investment in a portfolio of R&D projects with (expected) rates of return to individual R&D projects. While such a link between R&D investment and impact is usually assumed to be implicit, this dissertation attempts to make this link explicit and estimate the shape and position of the agricultural R&D opportunity curve for different sets of countries (developed versus developing) and for different time periods (early 1960s versus early 1980s). This is done by bringing together information on investment levels in agricultural R&D (the how much question) with information obtained from a large number of different studies on rates of return to agricultural R&D. The question of "How much is invested in agricultural R&D?" is addressed in a series of four chapters that have been published previously as articles. They show that in both developed and developing countries, the growth in investment in public agricultural R&D has slowed down steadily during the past 30 years. Nevertheless, between 1961 and 1991 public agricultural research investments in developed countries increased in real terms (i.e., net of inflation) by a factor of 2.7 and in developing countries, by a factor of 5.3. Despite this growth, however, there has not been a notable decline in the average rate of return to investments in agricultural R&D. This finding can only be reconciled by assuming that the R&D opportunity curve is not constant but shifts (and in this case positively) through time. The estimated shape and position of the R&D opportunity curves provides a good starting point for assessing the widely shared perception that there is underinvestment in agricultural R&D. An important finding of this dissertation is that in relative terms, developing countries not only have a considerably more limited portfolio of profitable agricultural R&D projects to choose from than developed countries, but their capacity to select, finance, and implement those opportunities is also substantially weaker. Hence, underinvestment in agricultural R&D tends to be more critical in developing than in developed countries. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have wanted to write this dissertation for more than ten years, but finding the (right) time turned out to be difficult in combination with a full-time job. In the meantime, however, the material to draw upon accumulated steadily. By basing my dissertation on published articles, the idea was that it could be done quite quickly. Only a solid theoretical introduction and a concluding chapter that would pull the various articles together were needed. The truth is, however, that I got somewhat carried away. By selecting underinvestment in agricultural R&D as the unifying theme for my conclusions, this section (Part III) expanded substantially. The end result is something of a hybrid between a traditional dissertation and one that is based on published articles. The four articles included in this dissertation (chapters 3-6) were written with Julian Alston, Jock Anderson, Nienke Beintema, Barbara Craig, Phil Pardey, and Hans Rutten. I thank them sincerely for their collaboration and their contribution to this dissertation. Thanks also go to the publishers of World Development and Agricultural Economics, who allowed me to reprint the four articles. Inspiration is in short supply in this world, and I would like to thank in particular Phil Pardey, who has been a constant source of inspiration throughout my career. Science, however, is not only about new ideas, but also about new and old ideas being tested and challenged. Many of my colleagues at ISNAR and Wageningen University have contributed to this process. They helped me to weed out many wrong ideas and to develop further the few that looked promising. I thank them all but, in particular, David Bigman and Gerdien Meyerink, who have been very patient sparing partners at critical moments. Thanks also go to my two academic supervisors, Arie Kuyvenhoven and Paul Diederen. Despite the long delays, Arie always remained optimistic that I would complete my dissertation (even as I write these words, the pessimist in me is not sure yet), while Paul helped me to straighten out many of the technical details. Special thanks go to Astrid Oosterling, Kathleen Sheridan, Fionnuala Hawes, and Richard Claase. They all four assisted in getting this dissertation ready for publication. Astrid (re-) produced most of the graphs, Kathleen edited the text, Fionnuala did the text layout, while Richard took care of the cover design. I thank ISNAR's management for providing the opportunity to complete my dissertation. Last, but not least, I want to thank Cees and my family and friends for understanding and accepting that I had to spend less time with them than I should have during the past few years.
Recent Trends in Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Extension (ISBN: 978-93-88901-32-1)
Bhumi Publishing , 2023
The Indian as well as world population is ever increasing. Hence, it is imperative to boost up agriculture production. This problem can be turned into opportunity by developing skilled manpower to utilize the available resources for food security. Agricultural research can meet this challenge. New technologies have to be evolved and taken from lab to land for sustained yield. The present book on agriculture is to serve as a source of information covering maximum aspects, which can help understand the topics with eagerness to study further research. We developed this digital book with the goal of helping people achieve that feeling of accomplishment. The articles in the book have been contributed by eminent scientists, academicians. Our special thanks and appreciation goes to experts and research workers whose contributions have enriched this book. We thank our publisher Bhumi Publishing, India for taking pains in bringing out the book.
2001
We used a disaggregate approach to examine investment efficiency of wheat breeding research in India. India's total research effort comprizes 20 research programs spread across 50 experiment stations. A technology spillover matrix was constructed for both potential and actual spillovers. Spillovers and free-riding were dominant characteristics of technical change during the period studied. Although the aggregate rate of return to wheat improvement research in India was estimated to be 55%, eight programs were found to have earned a negative rate of return when spillins were taken into account. Research output is concentrated on a few strong programs. The two strongest programs generated 75% of all the technical change benefits, even though they claimed just 22% of research resources. These two programs include a significant degree of overlap, while on the other hand many farmers were not reached by any of the programs -56 and 78% of rainfed and durum area, respectively, in 1990 was still sown with pre-1976 varieties.
Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020
This is the introductory chapter to an NBER book by the same name. Early drafts of the chapters in this book were presented and discussed at the NBER conference on the "Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture," Washington, D.C., May 17, 2019 funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. I am grateful for excellent comments on this chapter from Matt Clancy, James McDonald, Paul Rhode, Michael Roberts, and Brian Wright. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
Scarcity of documented information on hitherto done research at our university has often remained the concern of scientists. Therefore, this book of abstracts has been compiled by the Office of Research Affairs with the aim of providing researchers with quick and easy reference for planning further research as well as for teaching purposes. This book contains most of the abstracts of MSc thesis research conducted by students of the stream of Agricultural Economics from 1996 up to 2013. However, we would like to inform readers that, due to limited access to some of the graduate students' theses, we have been unable to include all of the abstracts in this first edition. We hope that the second edition will be more inclusive than this one. The order of the author names under each title indicates the student, major advisor, and co-advisors.