Aggregate Private R&D Investments in Agriculture: The Role of Incentives, Public Policies, and Institutions

Most observers have come to agree that Research and Development (R&D) is fundamental to the innovations that take place in advanced countries and that drive growth and development around the world. This is equally true for agricultural R&D, which has substantially increased the supply of food and fiber over time. Given the evident importance of agricultural R&D, we look at the forces that determine the amount of privately funded research in this vital sector using a sample of European countries. We construct indicators of private incentives, property rights, and publicly funded research in the various countries. Private research has grown with unusual speed in recent years and offers the prospect of advances in the quality of agricultural goods as well as reductions in their costs. Furthermore, considerable interest exists in knowing how changes in private and public research expenditures are related empirically; for example, are they complements or substitutes?1 If they are substitutes, then additional private agricultural R&D expenditures may not result in larger total agricultural research expenditures.