There is evidence of an increase in market concentration and in the importance of private plant breeding in the seed industry following the widespread adoption of Intellectual Property Rights regimes for the industry in the developed world. We use data from the US Patent and Trademark Office, US...

The literature analysing the impacts of livestock banks is limited to a small number of papers, mostly of a qualitative nature. This paper contributes to the knowledge on the impacts of this type of intervention on short- term household food security through the analysis of original data form...

Summary This paper examines how farmers in a developing country search for information. Using data on farmers' decisions to connect with other farmers in order to ask for information about different agricultural problems, we explore the role played by identity in accessing information. We show...

This paper evaluates one indirect impact of fertilizer policy, the nutritional gains due to increased food production. We look specifically at the case of Malawi’s Targeted Input Program and show that benefitting from the program during its entire duration could have led to gains substantial...

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regimes for plant breeding are generally justified on the basis that they encourage innovation. Introduction of IPR regimes for plant varieties in the United States has led to increased concentration, but it is less clear whether IPRs have promoted useful...

An argument in favor of the development of genetically modified (GM) hybrids is that their presence is considered to be risk decreasing. On this basis, insurance premiums for corn growers in the United States who plant approved hybrids have been reduced. In this study we investigate, using a...

This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics for the formation of bilateral credit arrangements to help manage idiosyncratic risk. Using original data on expected wealth dynamics, social networks and informal loans among southern Ethiopian pastoralist households, we find...

"The deregulation of Ghana’s domestic cocoa supply chain that took place in the early 1990s was expected to bring competition among different private buyers and to generate a number of production incentives to the farmers. Most notably, it was expected that competition would emerge by...

Although there is a considerable amount of empirical evidence on inter-firm collaborations within technology-based industries, there are only a few works focussing on R&D cooperation by low-tech firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Providing further and new evidence based...

We use a large, rich dataset compiled from results of university extension trials to estimate the contribution of genetic modification (GM) to changes in corn yield in the United States from timeA to timeB. Through repeated experimental trials, we obtain consistent estimates of the effect of...