Title
Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction
Campus Units
Economics, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Submitted Manuscript
Publication Date
5-2008
Journal or Book Title
Environmental and Resource Economics
Volume
40
Issue
1
First Page or Article ID Number
53
Last Page
72
DOI
10.1007/s10640-007-9140-5
Abstract
This paper studies how the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs) affects investments in biological innovations when the value of an innovation is stochastically reduced to zero because of the evolution of pest resistance. We frame the problem as a research and development (R&D) investment game in a duopoly model of sequential innovation. We characterize the incentives to invest in R&D under two competing IPR regimes, which differ in their treatment of the follow-on innovations that become necessary because of pest adaptation. Depending on the magnitude of the R&D cost, ex ante firms might prefer an intellectual property regime with or without a “research exemption” provision. The study of the welfare function that also accounts for benefit spillovers to consumers—which is possible analytically under some parametric conditions, and numerically otherwise—shows that the ranking of the two IPR regimes depends critically on the extent of the R&D cost.
JEL Classification
L00, O31, O34, Q28
Recommended Citation
Yerokhin, Oleg and Moschini, Giancarlo, "Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction" (2008). Economics Publications. 185.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/econ_las_pubs/185
Comments
This is a working paper of a an article from Environmental and Resource Economics 40 (2008): 53, doi: 10.1007/s10640-007-9140-5.