IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/drm/wpaper/2014-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Promoting innovation on the seed market and biodiversity: the role of IPRs and commercialisation rules

Author

Listed:
  • Marc Baudry
  • Adrien Hervouet

Abstract

This article deals with the impact of legislation in the seed sector on incentives for variety creation. Two categories of rules interact. The first category consists in intellectual property rights and is intended to address a problem of sequential innovation and R&D investments by the private sector. The second category concerns commercial rules that are intended to correct a problem of adverse selection on the seed market. We propose a dynamic model of market equilibrium with vertical product differentiation that enables us to take into account the economic consequences of imposing either Plant Breeders’ Rights (PBRs) or patents as IPRs. We simultaneously examine two kinds of commercial legislation: compulsory registration in a catalogue and minimum standards for commercialisation. Analytical results are completed by numerical simulations. The main result is that the combination between minimum standards and PBRs provides higher incentives for sequential innovation and may be preferred by a public regulator to maximise the expected and discounted total surplus when sunk investment costs are low or when they are medium and the probability of R&D success is sufficiently high. This solution differs from the combination of IPRs and commercialisation rules used in both the US and Europe. Otherwise, PBRs have to be replaced by patents, which yields a configuration close to that observed in the US. The catalogue commercialisation rule is seldom preferred to minimum standards, so that the combination of IPRs and commercialisation rules that prevails in Europe is not supported by our model.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc Baudry & Adrien Hervouet, 2014. "Promoting innovation on the seed market and biodiversity: the role of IPRs and commercialisation rules," EconomiX Working Papers 2014-32, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    • Handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2014-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economix.fr/pdf/dt/2014/WP_EcoX_2014-32.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. W. Lesser, 2000. "An economic approach to identifying an “effective sui generis system” for plant variety protection under trips," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(1), pages 96-114.
    2. Richard Carew & Stephen Devadoss, 2003. "Quantifying the Contribution of Plant Breeders’Rights and Transgenic Varieties to Canola Yields: Evidence from Manitoba," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 51(3), pages 371-395, November.
    3. Alston, Julian M. & Venner, Raymond J., 2002. "The effects of the US Plant Variety Protection Act on wheat genetic improvement," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 527-542, May.
    4. Lars Brink & Bruce McCarl, 1978. "The Tradeoff between Expected Return and Risk Among Cornbelt Farmers," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 60(2), pages 259-263.
    5. Oleg Yerokhin & GianCarlo Moschini, 2008. "Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 40(1), pages 53-72, May.
    6. GianCarlo Moschini & Oleg Yerokhin, 2008. "Patents, Research Exemption, and the Incentive for Sequential Innovation," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 379-412, June.
    7. G. M.P. Swann, 2009. "The Economics of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13211.
    8. Lence, Sergio H. & Hayes, Dermot J. & McCunn, Alan & Smith, Stephen & Niebur, William S., 2005. "Welfare Impacts of Intellectual Property Protection in the Seed Industry," Staff General Research Papers Archive 12434, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    9. repec:bla:devpol:v:21:y:2003:i::p:419-447 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Alan McCunn & Stephen Smith & William S. Niebur, 2005. "Welfare Impacts of Intellectual Property Protection in the Seed Industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(4), pages 951-968.
    11. Diez, M. C. F., 2002. "The impact of plant varieties rights on research: the case of Spain," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 171-183, April.
    12. Stefan Ambec & Corinne Langinier & Stéphane Lemarié, 2008. "Incentives to Reduce Crop Trait Durability," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(2), pages 379-391.
    13. James Bessen & Eric Maskin, 2009. "Sequential innovation, patents, and imitation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(4), pages 611-635, December.
    14. Ted O'Donoghue & Suzanne Scotchmer & Jacques‐François Thisse, 1998. "Patent Breadth, Patent Life, and the Pace of Technological Progress," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(1), pages 1-32, March.
    15. Bresnahan, Timothy F, 1987. "Competition and Collusion in the American Automobile Industry: The 1955 Price War," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 457-482, June.
    16. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    17. Tripp, Robert & Louwaars, Niels, 1997. "Seed regulation: choices on the road to reform," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 433-446, October.
    18. W. Lesser, 1997. "Assessing the Implications of Intellectual Property Rights on Plant and Animal Agriculture," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1584-1591.
    19. Lesser, William H., 2000. "An Economic Approach To Identifying An 'Effective Sui Generis System' For Plant Variety Protection Unders Trips," Transitions in Agbiotech: Economics of Strategy and Policy, June 24-25, 1999, Washington, D.C. 25996, Regional Research Project NE-165 Private Strategies, Public Policies, and Food System Performance.
    20. Suzanne Scotchmer, 1991. "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Cumulative Research and the Patent Law," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 29-41, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baudry Marc & Hervouet Adrien, 2016. "Innovation in the Seed Market: The Role of IPRs and Commercialization Rules," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 51-68, May.
    2. Marc Baudry & Adrien Hervouet, 2017. "The private value of plant variety protection and the impact of exemption rules," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 202-226, April.
    3. Derek Eaton, 2013. "Innovation and IPRs in the Agricultural Seed Sector," CIES Research Paper series 19-2013, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    4. Eaton, Derek, 2015. "Innovation and IPRs for Agricultural Crop Varieties as Intermediate Goods," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211581, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Eaton, Derek, 2014. "A model of IPRs in the international supply chain of seeds and agricultural production," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182643, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Brüggemann, Julia & Crosetto, Paolo & Meub, Lukas & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Intellectual property rights hinder sequential innovation. Experimental evidence," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(10), pages 2054-2068.
    7. Adrien Hervouet & Stéphane Lemarié, 2023. "The Economics of Royalty Rates in Plant Breeding," Working Papers 2023-03, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    8. Guido Cozzi & Silvia Galli, 2009. "Science‐Based R&D In Schumpeterian Growth," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 56(4), pages 474-491, September.
    9. Hervouet, Adrien & Langinier, Corinne, 2018. "Plant Breeders’ Rights, Patents, and Incentives to Innovate," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 43(1), January.
    10. Eaton, Derek J.F. & Tripp, Robert & Louwaars, Niels P., 2006. "The Effects of Strengthened IPR Regimes on the Plant Breeding Sector in Developing Countries," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25455, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. Panebianco, Fabrizio & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2016. "Innovation, Pricing and Targeting in Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 11398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Rockett, Katharine, 2010. "Property Rights and Invention," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 315-380, Elsevier.
    13. Yang, Xuebing, 2013. "Horizontal inventive step and international protection of intellectual property," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 338-355.
    14. Spyros Arvanitis & Florian Seliger, 2014. "Imitation versus innovation," KOF Working papers 14-367, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    15. Eaton, Derek J.F. & van Tongeren, Frank W., 2005. "Should Europe Further Strengthen Intellectual Property for Plant Breeders? An Analysis of Seed Industry Proposals," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24725, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Gauguier, Jean-Jacques, 2009. "L’industrialisation de l’Open Source," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/4388 edited by Toledano, Joëlle.
    17. Luigi Balletta & Antonio Tesoriere, 2020. "Cumulative innovation, open source, and distance to frontier," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(6), pages 1875-1920, December.
    18. Bernhard Ganglmair & Imke Reimers, 2019. "Visibility of Technology and Cumulative Innovation: Evidence from Trade Secrets Laws," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2019_119v1, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    19. Stefan Ambec & Corinne Langinier & Stéphane Lemarié, 2008. "Incentives to Reduce Crop Trait Durability," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(2), pages 379-391.
    20. Aalbers, Rob & Shestalova, Victoria & Kocsis, Viktória, 2013. "Innovation policy for directing technical change in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1240-1250.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intellectual Property Rights; Plant Breeders’ Rights; Catalogue; Product differentiation; Asymmetric information; Biodiversity.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:drm:wpaper:2014-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valerie Mignon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/modemfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.