unobservable shocks as carriers of contagion we propose an identified structural garch model to disentangle the dynamics of financial market crises we distinguish between the hypersensitivity of a domestic market in crisis to news from foreign non crisis markets and the contagion imported to a tranquil domestic market from foreign crises the model also enables us to connect unobserved structural shocks with their source markets using variance decompositions and to compare the size and dynamics of impulses during crises periods with tranquil period impulses to illustrate we apply the method to data from the 1997 1998 asian financial crisis which consists of a complicated set of interacting crises we find significant hypersensitivity and contagion between these markets but also show that links may strengthen or weaken impulse response functions for an equally weighted equity portfolio show the increasing dominance of korean and hong kong shocks during the crises and covariance responses demonstrate multiple layers of contagion effects

consistent solutions in atomless economies we consider the problem of allocating a bundle of commodities among a group of agents who are collectively entitled to them we prove for an atomless economy with possibly satiated preferences any solution that is efficient equitable and consistent must select allocations that are supported by equal budget walrasian equilibria with slack we consider the problem of allocating a bundle of commodities among a group of agents who are collectively entitled to them we search for systematic methods or solutions of resolving this problem for a solution to be considered desirable we propose that it should satisfy several requirements first it should be efficient second it should be equitable a variety of distributional require ments have been proposed in the literature the requirement we will impose here is that it select allocations at which no agent would prefer the equal division of the social endowment to his own consumption in addition to these two basic efficiency and equity conditions we require that the solution be consistent the recommendations it makes for any economy are never contra dicted by the recommendations it makes for any reduced economy obtained by allowing some subgroup of agents to leave the scene with their allotted consumptions the requirement of consistency is very natural here is a motivation for it offered by thomson 1988 consider all the resources available on the planet earth one would like not only that they be distributed fairly when the planet is considered as a whole but also that whatever resources end up in each continent country city be fairly distributed among the members of that subpopulation when considered in isolation in this paper we study economies with a large number of agents modelled as a complete atomless measure space our main result is a characterization of the solutions that satisfy all three requirements of efficiency equity and con sistency it follows from our result that under standard assumptions on preferences any such solution must select allocations that are supported by equal income walrasian equilibria however our characterization holds for more general economies since it applies to economies in which preferences are possibly satiated mas colell 1988 extended traditional general equilibrium theory to the class of such economies by introducing the notion of walrasian

risk preferences and pesticide use by cotton farmers in china abstract despite that insect resistant bt cotton has been lauded for its ability to reduce the use of pesticides studies have shown that chinese bt cotton farmers continue to use excessive amounts of pesticides using results from a survey and an artefactual field experiment we find that farmers who are more risk averse use greater quantities of pesticides we also find that farmers who are more loss averse use lesser quantities of pesticides this result is consistent with our conceptual framework and suggestive evidence where farmers behave in a loss averse manner in the health domain and place more weight on the importance of health over money in the loss domain

welfare impacts of intellectual property protection in the seed industry we examine the welfare impact of different intellectual property protection ipp regimes in private sector seed research and development r d we take into account the period after expiration of legal ipp and require simultaneous equilibrium in markets for r d seeds and final product optimal ipp is remarkably insensitive to alternative parameterizations except for r d productivity results suggest that optimal ipp is greater than ipp in the u s seed corn market but lower than the ipp that could be attained with genetic use restriction technologies optimal ipp is much higher than ipp achieved under open pollinated crops or where legal ipp is limited

policies for african seed enterprise development abstract the commercial seed sector has been slow to develop in sub saharan africa the paper examines the major impediments and identifies areas in which seed policies can be strengthened seed enterprise development has been hampered by regulatory frameworks that favor parastatal enterprises and that inhibit commercial innovation in addition government and donor projects provide large amounts of free or subsidized seed that further discourages seed enterprise development in addition to regulatory reform and the curtailment of many seed distribution projects there are other policy changes that need to be implemented national agricultural research institutes need to invest more resources in promoting their varieties and helping to stimulate commercial seed production greater emphasis is required on regional strategies for public plant breeding and private seed marketing national policies need to strengthen input marketing capacity and infrastructure finally donors governments and ngos should shift from trying to encourage village level commercial seed production and instead strengthen farmers capacities to assess new varieties and to be effective consumers of commercial inputs

a simple model of credit contagion abstract we propose a simple model of credit contagion in which we include macro and microstructural interdependencies among the debtors within a credit portfolio the microstructure captures interdependencies between debtors that go beyond their exposure to common factors e g business or legal interdependencies we show that even for diversified portfolios moderate microstructural interdependencies have a significant impact on the tails of the loss distribution this impact increases dramatically for less diversified microstructures

correlated risks vs contagion in stochastic transition models abstract this paper studies the problem of disentangling risk correlation and contagion in a set of individual binary processes the two admissible values correspond to bad and good risk states of an individual the risk correlation is captured by introducing a dynamic frailty whereas the contagion passes through the effect of the lagged number of individuals in the bad risk state we study carefully the dynamic properties of the joint process then we focus on the limiting case of large populations portfolios the difficulty to identify risk correlation and contagion in finite samples is illustrated by means of monte carlo simulations

intellectual property rights and developing country agriculture abstract theoretical studies indicate that the welfare of the developing countries might either be improved or damaged by the strengthening of their own intellectual property rights net gains through their agricultural sectors will be positive if the payoff from new innovations is sufficiently different as compared to the technology exporting countries scattered evidence supports the hypotheses that agricultural r d is responsive to iprs in developing countries but there is also evidence that developed country technology is sufficiently appropriate for developing countries as to offer substantial free rider gains however without iprs it seems unlikely that the agricultural productivity rates in developing countries can begin to catch up with those in developed country agriculture

biotechnology boosts to crop productivity in china trade and welfare implications genetically modified gm cotton is widely adopted and the list of gm technologies in trials is impressive in china at the same time there is an active debate on when china should commercialize its gm food crops this paper provides an economy wide assessment of some of the issues surrounding the adoption and commercialization of biotechnology based on unique data from empirical micro level study and field trials in china and a modified gtap model our results indicate that the development of biotechnology has an important impact on china s production trade and welfare welfare gains far outweigh the public biotechnology research expenditures most gains occur inside china and can be achieved independently from biotech unfriendly polices adopted in some industrialized countries

the impact of bt cotton on poor households in rural india the impact of genetically modified gm crops on the poor in developing countries is still the subject of controversy while previous studies have examined direct productivity effects of bacillus thuringiensis bt cotton and other gm crops little is known about wider socioeconomic outcomes we use a microeconomic modelling approach and comprehensive survey data from india to analyse welfare and distribution effects in a typical village economy bt cotton adoption increases returns to labour especially for hired female workers likewise aggregate household incomes rise including for poor and vulnerable farmers hence bt cotton contributes to poverty reduction and rural development

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

intellectual property rights and the welfare effects of agricultural r d the profound changes that have affected agriculture in modern times are perhaps best illustrated by the evolution of production techniques due to mechanization new chemical inputs such as herbicides pesticides and fertilizers genetic selection of crops and animals new crop varieties and countless other technical and organizational improvements these innovations have allowed a generalized increase in physical output while at the same time agriculture has suffered a massive exodus of labor forces towards the non farm sectors indeed a stylized fact of developed countries post war growth is that productivity in agriculture has grown faster than in other sectors jorgenson and gollop 1992 this remarkable record naturally begs the question of what is at its root and a view that commands considerable consensus is that agricultural productivity growth is due to past investments in scientific research and development r d

cyclical correlations credit contagion and portfolio losses abstract we model aggregate credit losses on large portfolios of financial positions contracted with firms subject to both cyclical default correlation and direct default contagion processes cyclical correlation is due to the dependence of firms on common economic factors contagion is associated with the local interaction of firms with their business partners we provide an explicit normal approximation of the distribution of portfolio losses we quantify the relation between the variability of global economic fundamentals strength of local firm interaction and the fluctuation of losses we find that cyclical oscillations in fundamentals dominate average losses while local interaction causes additional fluctuations of losses around their average the strength of the contagion induced loss variability depends on the complexity of the business partner network

the effects of the us plant variety protection act on wheat genetic improvement in our model of partially appropriable invention if the us plant variety protection act pvpa of 1970 succeeded in strengthening intellectual property protection for plant breeders it should have led to increases in investment in varietal r d improved varietal quality and enhanced royalties these hypotheses are tested using data on us wheat we find that the pvpa may have stimulated public but not private sector investment in wheat varietal improvement but that the pvpa did not cause any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields these findings indicate that the pvpa had little impact on excludability or appropriability in wheat varieties

pro poor agricultural biotechnology can the international research system deliver the goods abstract while global investment in agricultural research by the private sector is increasing with growth in developing country markets and the emergence of new technologies complementary public sector investment is stagnating or declining in many developing countries this review argues that the changing roles of the public and private sectors in generating new scientific knowledge may adversely affect the diffusion of explicitly pro poor technologies technologies that are simultaneously yield enhancing and poverty reducing comparing historical evidence from the green revolution with recent evidence from the emerging era of agricultural biotechnology this review argues that a more pluralistic international system for agricultural research will be more responsive to poverty only if the strategic leadership role of the public sector is strengthened certain research functions are reallocated to the private sector and new policy and organizational mechanisms are used to stimulate pro poor research in and for developing country agriculture

intellectual property protection in plant varieties a worldwide index 1961 2011 in this paper we construct a new index measuring the strength of intellectual property ip protection for plant varieties in 69 countries over the period 1961 2011 we examine the statistical properties of the index and compare it with other indicators of ip protection we conclude that the index provides a reasonable synthetic assessment of the relative strength of ip protection in plant varieties across countries in addition we study the main determinants of the evolution of the index and examine the patterns of correlation between the index and agricultural production

the contribution of genetic modification to changes in corn yield in the united states 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 these traits by using both the hausman taylor estimator and a comparison of fixed effects estimates analogous to the agronomic practice of comparing near isolines our results suggest that gm traits had a positive impact on yield but that gains associated with combining several gm traits in one hybrid are not necessarily additive

stochastic cascades credit contagion and large portfolio losses abstract we analyze an interactive model of credit ratings where external shocks spread by a contagious chain reaction to the entire economy counterparty relationships along with discrete adjustments of credit ratings generate a transition mechanism that allows the financial distress of one firm to spill over to its business partners the spread of financial distress constitutes a source of intrinsic risk for large portfolios of credit sensitive securities that cannot be diversified away we provide a characterization of the fluctuations of credit ratings in large economies when adjustments follow a threshold rule and analyze the effects of downgrading cascades on credit portfolios

genetic engineering and trade panacea or dilemma for developing countries abstract advocates of the use of genetic engineering techniques in agriculture contend that this new biotechnology promises increased productivity better use of natural resources and more nutritious foods opponents are concerned about potentially adverse implications for the environment and food safety in response to consumer reactions against genetically modified gm foods in some countries crop production is being segregated into gm and non gm varieties this analysis finds that world markets for maize and soybeans adjust well to these changes and also that developing countries will divert their trade patterns in response to preference changes in important trading partner countries

the costs and benefits of refuge requirements the case of bt cotton abstract refuge requirements have been the primary regulatory tool to delay pest resistance to bt crops this paper presents a simple method to estimate the annual cost of refuges to producers applying it to bt cotton it also examines broader welfare impacts estimating how bt cotton acreage restrictions affect producer surplus consumer surplus seed supplier profits and commodity program outlays the implications of grower adoption behavior partial adoption aggregate adoption and refuge choice for regulatory costs are examined empirical examples illustrate how providing multiple refuge options significantly reduces regulatory costs

fifteen years of bt cotton in china the economic impact and its dynamics summary even though the economic benefit of bt cotton adoption in the short run has been well documented the dynamics of this benefit remain unclear in particular the possibility of pest resistance build up and secondary pest outbreaks has caused concern regarding the sustainability of this economic benefit in the long run hence this study analyzes the economic impact of bt cotton and its dynamics in china using nationally representative long panel data for 1997 2012 we show that this economic benefit continues 15 years after the commercialization of bt cotton

patent rights and trade analysis of biological products medicinals and botanicals and pharmaceuticals this article analyzes the effects of foreign patent rights on u s bilateral exports the empirical analysis covers three highly disaggregated drug industries over three decades we estimate bilateral trade equations for each industry using cross country data on the strength of national patent rights the findings show that strong foreign patent rights enhance the market power of u s drug exporters across countries with weak imitative abilities alternatively strong foreign patent rights stimulate the market expansion of u s drug exports across countries with strong imitative abilities these effects are larger in magnitude during the 1980 90s relative to the 1970s copyright 2002 oxford university press

an economic capital model integrating credit and interest rate risk in the banking book banks often measure credit and interest rate risk in the banking book separately and then add the risk measures to determine economic capital this approach misses complex interactions between the two risk types we develop a framework where these risks are analysed jointly since banking book positions are generally not marked to market our model is based on book value accounting our simulations show that interactions matter and that ignoring them leads to risk overstatement the magnitude of the errors depends on the structure of the balance sheet and on the repricing characteristics of assets and liabilities

intellectual capital in a q theory of ag biotech mergers tobin s q theory of investment has been linked to firm merger activity by jovanovic and rousseau jr they showed that firms with higher q values that is the ratio of market to book values tend to be the ones buying other firms and not the ones being acquired market values should theoretically equal book values a firm s assets as they appear on the balance sheet equal to their cost less accumulated depreciation in reality book value often differs from market value especially in knowledge intensive industries indicating the premium above measurable assets that shareholders are willing to pay for a company s unique combination of market position tangible and intangible capital goodwill and other favorable characteristics firms with greater q values are in a position to acquire more capital possibly through mergers and acquisitions to make further use of their advantages this article extends the jr analysis to consider the role of intellectual capital in merger activity we analyze the connection between intangible capital and the q theory of mergers in the agricultural biotechnology ag biotech industry this industry underwent significant technological change beginning in the late 1980s as new biotechnology techniques were integrated with plant breeding and other agricultural practices the number of patent applications in the field grew from less than a 100 a year in the late 1980s to more than 500 applications per year by the mid 1990s bennett et al along with this technological change

plant variety protection in developing countries a report from the field the establishment of intellectual property rights iprs for plant varieties has caused considerable controversy but there is relatively little empirical evidence on performance and options in developing countries this paper summarizes the results of a recent five country study concentrating on the conduct of plant variety protection pvp regimes it examines pvp in the context of other mechanisms that provide incentives for plant breeding it discusses the principal options available to developing countries and examines the ability of pvp to offer protection from competing firms and from on farm seed saving it also looks at the administrative and management requirements of pvp regimes although the paper does not discuss patent protection for biotechnology it examines the ipr requirements for the introduction of transgenic varieties developing countries need to establish an appropriate pvp system but pvp should be seen as part of a broader strategy for seed system development

incentive to reduce crop trait durability to reduce the competition from farmers who self produce seed an inbred line seed producer can switch to nondurable hybrid seed in a two period model we investigate the impact of crop durability on self production pricing and switching decisions and we examine the impact of license fees paid by self producing farmers first in an inbred line seed monopoly model we find that the monopolist may produce technologically dominated hybrid seed in order to extract more surplus from farmers further the introduction of license fees improves efficiency second we study how the monopolist s behavior is affected by the entry of a nondurable hybrid seed producer we show that the inbred line seed producer might benefit from competing with a technologically dominated hybrid seed producer as this allows for consumers discrimination

an analysis of selectivity in the productivity evaluation of biotechnology an application to corn we investigate selectivity bias in the evaluation of biotech hybrid productivity the analysis is applied to experimental data on wisconsin corn yields from 1990 to 2010 relying on a heckman like factor that accounts for selectivity we find evidence of selection bias indicating that some of the observed yield advantage associated with gm hybrids can be attributed to their conventional genes we document how the rising market concentration of biotech firms has contributed to increasing selectivity bias in corn yield the impact however is offset by the negative effect of the rising adoption rate of gm corn on selectivity bias copyright 2013 oxford university press

looking beyond national boundaries regional harmonization of seed policies laws and regulations countries in west eastern and southern africa are pursuing the regional harmonization of their seed laws and regulations common regulatory frameworks are expected to reduce the costs of trading seed and encourage scale economies in seed production as a result commercial seed production is expected to expand providing farmers with improved access to new varieties and stimulating productivity growth the impact of these harmonization efforts will depend on the details of the regulatory agreements policy makers are being asked to consider a complicated series of trade offs between stricter measures for quality control and the need to encourage the multiplication and distribution of lower cost seed they are also being confronted with two possible views of sectoral development one view entails the pursuit of better linkages between distinct national seed markets the second involves the development of truly regionalized seed markets where seed can be readily produced in one country and sold in any other country this implies greater regional interdependence of seed supply the paper compares the harmonization agreements being pursued in each of the three african regions and progress in implementing the accords efforts to adapt international seed market standards to the contingencies of african markets are discussed and priorities for further policy analysis are identified

private research and public benefit the private seed industry for sorghum and pearl millet in india in contrast to conventional wisdom private firms are spending substantial amounts of money on research to develop new cultivars for small farmer subsistence agriculture indian firms spend almost as much as the government on breeding pearl millet and sorghum the hybrids developed by firms are becoming popular with farmers about 900 000 ha were planted with private pearl millet and sorghum hybrids in 1987 the higher yields of private hybrids increased grain output by at least 200 000 t although prices for seed of private hybrids are higher than seed of cultivars developed by government research most of the benefits from private breeding research accrue to farmers and consumers the research for this paper was primarily financed by usaid new delhi we also received support from icrisat we would like to thank the scientists of the aicsip a1cpmip iari officials of the ministry of agriculture nsc sscs and executives of private seed companies for their cooperation we also appreciate the comments of john witcombe tom walker and wayne freeman on earlier drafts of this paper the opinions expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of usaid or icrisat

roundup ready soybeans in argentina farm level and aggregate welfare effects although adoption rates of genetically modified crops have been staggering in some countries there is still comparatively little evidence about biotechnology impacts under diverse agroecological and institutional conditions these knowledge gaps lead to an overly precautious attitude among policy makers and the public this article analyzes the effects of roundup ready rr soybeans in argentina the country with the second biggest transgenic area worldwide based on recent survey data it is shown that the technology increases total factor productivity by 10 on average with cost savings being somewhat more pronounced for smaller than for larger farms the reduction in use of toxic herbicides and of tillage operations entails positive environmental repercussions aggregate welfare effects are computed over the 1996 2001 period with a three region partial equilibrium model comprising argentina the united states and the rest of the world in 2001 rr soybeans created more than us 1 2 billion of economic surplus at the global level the largest share went to consumers 53 followed by seed and biotechnology firms 34 and agricultural producers 13 due to comparatively weak intellectual property protection and thus only small technology mark ups in seed prices and widespread adoption argentine soybean growers receive 90 of the benefits in that country this demonstrates that farmers in developing countries can gain considerably when they obtain access to suitable foreign innovations through technology spill overs

the private delivery of public crop varieties rice in andhra pradesh although there has been a considerable growth of private seed enterprises in developing countries there are few examples of the private delivery of seed of public crop varieties that are not hybrids this paper discusses the example of rice in andhra pradesh where private enterprise is supplying an increasing proportion of the seed used by farmers the institutional conditions for private expansion into rice seed are examined the paper discusses instances where low transaction costs allow for the emergence of a wide range of seed enterprises but despite the success of private seed delivery inadequate attention has been given to incentives for variety promotion and to the importance of consumer education

welfare impacts of cross country spillovers in agricultural research the welfare implications of intellectual property protection ipp for private sector agricultural research are analyzed focusing on the realistic cases where countries provide different ipp levels technology spills over across countries and the public sector is involved in research a model is developed to determine who benefits from and who should pay for the associated research the article contains some interesting results on the implications of a harmonization of ipp policies through multilateral agreements or via technology that allows research firms to prevent the copying of plants and animals that express traits that have emerged from their research

intellectual property rights in mexico do they play a role summary there is little empirical evidence concerning the effects of intellectual property rights ipr in technologically advanced developing countries complete enumeration of the mexican maize breeding industry showed that contrary to the hypothesis that ipr would support innovation ipr play no role in the industry ipr theory should be revised to include characteristics of developing countries critical for the good functioning of ipr quality of the institutional environment and importance of transaction given the relatively good score of mexico on these critical aspects ipr are likely to play an even smaller role in other developing countries

private value allocations in large economies with differential information abstract we consider a radner type e g radner 1968 econometrica 36 31 58 pure exchange economy with differential information and a continuum of agents we show that under appropriate assumptions the set of aumann shapley private value allocations in such an economy coincides with the set of radner competitive equilibrium allocations journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 d51 d82

potential impacts of bt eggplant on economic surplus and farmers health in india in this article the potential impacts of bt eggplant technology in indian agriculture are analyzed several proprietary bt hybrids are likely to be commercialized in the near future based on field trial data it is shown that the technology can significantly reduce insecticide applications and increase effective yields comprehensive farm survey data are used to project farm level effects and future adoption rates simulations show that the aggregate economic surplus gains of bt hybrids could be around us 108 million per year consumers will capture a large share of these gains but farmers and the innovating company will benefit too as the company has also shared its technology with the public sector bt open pollinated varieties might become available with a certain time lag this would make the technology more accessible especially for resource poor farmers entailing further improvements in welfare and distribution effects the wider implications of the private public technology transfer are discussed furthermore the potential benefits for farmers health resulting from reduced insecticide applications are examined using an econometric model and a cost of illness approach these benefits are worth an additional 3 4 million per year yet they constitute only a small fraction of the technology s environmental and health externalities more research is needed for comprehensive impact analysis

infringement of intellectual property rights causes and consequences parallel revolutions in molecular biology and the legal framework that assigns intellectual property rights iprs to plant genetic resources have resultedin the emergence of agricultural biotechnology andthe introd uction of genetically modified gm products into the foodsystem iprs create economic incentives for research andd evelopment by making the innovator the residual claimant of the benefits associatedwith the new technology whereas iprs purport to protect intellectual property full appropriation of the benefits from the innovation is not a given when infringement of iprs i e piracy is profitable rational economic agents compliance with ipr provisions is by no means assured costly monitoring and enforcement are requiredto d eter unauthorized illegal use of the new technology experience from various countries aroundthe worldind icates that ipr enforcement is far from being perfect andmany successful innovations are

diversification into horticulture and poverty reduction a research agenda summary horticultural produce and processed products from the developing world are becoming increasingly popular both in domestic and in international markets global production and exports are rising steadily however yield increases have been smaller than area growth and have been negligible or even negative in the least developed countries while experience shows that horticulture can offer good opportunities for poverty reduction because it increases income and generates employment care must be taken that small and poor farmers are not excluded from the opportunities in these market sectors in this article we argue that development agencies must put more emphasis on horticultural research and development especially in the following priority areas genetic improvement safe production systems commercial seed production postharvest facilities and the urban peri urban environment

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

credit contagion in a network of firms with spatial interaction this contribution studies the effects of credit contagion on the credit risk of a portfolio of bank loans to this aim we introduce a model that takes into account the counterparty risk in a network of interdependent firms that describes the presence of business relations among different firms the location of the firms is simulated with probabilities computed using an entropy spatial interaction model by means of a wide simulation analysis we investigate the behavior of the model proposed and study the effects of default contagion on the loss distribution of a portfolio of bank loans

the impact of plant varieties rights on research the case of spain abstract in this paper we study the impact of plant variety rights pvr on the public and private research sectors in spain the objective is to bring to light data bearing on the role of pva in altering research incentives understanding intersectoral differences our results suggest that plant variety rights enactment has had a positive incentive especially for the private sector which increased its market share as a result of higher appropriability conditions the plant breeding sector consists of both international and small domestic firms many foreign breeders focus their research efforts on hybrid varieties which provide natural property rights because of a significance innovative activity of foreign breeders spain has expanded seed imports and reinforced technological dependence

village wide effects of agricultural biotechnology the case of bt cotton in india previous studies on impacts of agricultural biotechnology have mostly focused on direct effects we suggest an economy wide framework to analyze income distribution aspects more carefully for a village in india a micro social accounting matrix sam is developed and used to simulate the effects of bt cotton adoption overall the technology is employment generating although family labor in cotton production is saved while substantial benefits are observed for small and large farmers total household income effects are bigger for larger farms this is mostly due to differential opportunity incomes of saved family labor some research and policy implications are discussed

the effect of intellectual property rights on agricultural productivity this article explores how the strengthening of intellectual property ip protection affects agricultural productivity in a panel of countries for the period 1961 2011 using an index of ip protection for plant varieties we study the effect of stronger intellectual property rights iprs on cereal yields and two different types of cereals open pollinated wheat and hybrid maize we found that the strengthening of iprs has a positive effect on productivity of cereals for high and low income countries however we found no significant effect for middle income countries in addition we found that becoming a member of the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights negatively affects cereal yields finally we found evidence of the existence of nonlinearities in the effect of iprs on agricultural yields which confirms a threshold effect of iprs that also varies for countries of different income level the findings support the hypothesis that country specificities are important in determining the effect of iprs and imply that there is no unique system that fits all

patents and patent policy a patent is the legal right of an inventor to exclude others from making or using a particular invention this right is sometimes termed an intellectual property right and is viewed as an incentive for innovation this article surveys the evidence on patent effectiveness in encouraging innovation and reviews the current controversies in patent policy

impact of bt cotton in china abstract a sample of 283 cotton farmers in northern china was surveyed in december 1999 farmers that used cotton engineered to produce the bacillus thuringiensis bt toxin substantially reduced the use of pesticide without reducing the output ha or quality of cotton this resulted in substantial economic benefits for small farmers consumers did not benefit directly farmers obtained the major share of benefits and because of weak intellectual property rights very little went back to government research institutes or foreign firms that developed these varieties farmers using bt cotton reported fewer pesticide poisonings than those using conventional cotton

patent rights and innovative activity evidence from national and firm level data global standards of patent protection have been strengthened and harmonized in recent years despite the heated policy debates and theoretical controversies empirical studies of the consequences for innovative activity are scant this paper contributes to the debate by providing an empirical analysis of the effects of patent strength on different aspects of innovative activity namely firm level research and development r d domestic patenting and foreign patenting the analysis employs an updated index of patent rights the results show the complexity of evaluating the effects of patent reform on innovative activity since the effects vary nonlinearly depending on the initial level of patent strength and vary by a country s level of economic development overall for developing economies patent strength negatively affects domestic patent filings and insignificantly affects r d and foreign patent filings for developed economies patent strength positively affects r d and domestic patent filings and negatively affects foreign patent filings after some critical level of patent protection is reached journal of international business studies 2007 38 878 900 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400306

reforming intellectual property rights and the bt cotton seed industry in china who benefits from policy reform china has been one of the leaders in agricultural biotechnology research and the adoption of transgenic plants despite this critics argue that china s biotechnology policies could be improved to provide more benefits to farmers the objective of the paper is to examine if policy changes could improve the welfare of farmers in the cotton industry the paper first reviews recent changes in laws and policies that affect china s plant biotechnology sector with a focus on ipr legislation and seed industry reform next using a primary data set collected from 1661 plots from a sample of farmers in northern china in 1999 2000 we econometrically estimate the effect of changes to intellectual property rights ipr and seed and 2001 industry reform on farmer pesticide use and yields our results are consistent with a conclusion that improvements to the ipr environment and greater commercialization of the seed industry can increase the benefits that farmers derive from new cotton technology c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

on correlation and default clustering in credit markets we establish markovian models in the heath jarrow and morton 1992 paradigm that permit an exponential affine representation of riskless and risky bond prices while offering significant flexibility in the choice of volatility structures estimating models in our family is typically no more difficult than in the workhorse affine family besides diffusive and jump induced default correlations defaults can impact the credit spreads of surviving firms allowing for a greater clustering of defaults numerical implementations highlight the importance of incorporating interest rate credit spread correlations credit spread impact factors and the full credit spread curve when building a unified framework for pricing credit derivatives the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

intellectual property rights and the world trade organization retrospect and prospects this paper analyzes the main economic issues of intellectual property rights iprs protection in the context of the world trade organization wto a retrospective view on the establishment of the trips trade related aspects of intellectual property rights agreement a still controversial accomplishment of the uruguay round of trade liberalization is provided the paper reviews the economic rationale for the harmonization of iprs drawing both on economic theory considerations as well as emerging empirical evidence the logic of linking ipr protection and trade in the context of the wto is also re examined some specific attention is devoted to the implications of trips for agricultural and biotechnology innovations the impact that ipr protection can have in promoting growth and development and the relation of iprs with other economic policies is discussed the paper concludes with an analysis of the prospects for more or less iprs related consensus in the current round of wto negotiations

bt cotton in india field trial results and economic projections abstract the performance of bt cotton in india is analyzed on the basis of field trial data from 2001 the amounts of pesticides applied during the trials were reduced to one third of what was used in conventional cotton while under severe pest pressure yield gains were 80 productivity effects are modeled econometrically with a damage control specification the first approval for the commercial cultivation of bt hybrids was given in 2002 by 2005 the technology is expected to cover one quarter of total indian cotton area medium term projections show sizeable welfare gains for the overall economy with farmers being the main beneficiaries

an option perspective on generating and maintaining plant variety rights in china notwithstanding the ambiguous research and productivity promoting effects of plant variety protections pvps even in developed countries many developing countries have adopted pvps in the past few years in part to comply with their trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips obligations seeking and maintaining pvps reserves options to an expected revenue stream from the future sale of protected varieties the value of which varies for a host of reasons in this article we empirically examine the pattern of pvp applications in china since its pvp laws were first introduced in 1997 we place those pvp rights in the context of china s present and likely future seed markets to identify the economic incentives and institutional influences on decisions to develop and apply for varietal rights

the asymptotic nucleolus of large monopolistic market games abstract we study the asymptotic nucleolus of differentiable monopolistic market games in continuum economies with a finite number of traders types and show that under appropriate assumptions it is the center of symmetry of the subset of the core in which all the monopolists receive the same payoff thus the nucleolus discriminates the traders in the atomless sector whereas the competitive equilibrium does not moreover if there is a single syndicated atom and a finite number of atomless sectors the syndicate is treated more favorably under the asymptotic nucleolus than under the shapley value associated with the pure monopolistic market journal of economic literature classification numbers c71 d40

production risk pesticide use and gm crop technology in south africa technology involving genetic modification of crops has the potential to make a contribution to rural poverty reduction in many developing countries thus far pesticide producing bacillus thuringensis bt varieties of cotton have been the main gm crops under cultivation in developing nations several studies have evaluated the farm level performance of bt varieties in comparison to conventional ones by estimating production technology and have mostly found bt technology to be very successful in raising output and or reducing pesticide input however the production risk properties of this technology have not been studied although they are likely to be important to risk averse smallholders this study investigates the output risk aspects of bt technology by estimating two flexible risk production function models allowing technology to independently affect the mean and higher moments of output the first is the popular just pope model and the second is a more general damage control flexible risk mode

can gm technologies help the poor the impact of bt cotton in makhathini flats kwazulu natal abstract the results of a two year survey of smallholders in makhathini flats kwazulu natal show that farmers who adopted bt cotton in 1999 2000 benefited according to all the measures used higher yields and lower chemical costs outweighed higher seed costs giving higher gross margins these measures showed negative benefits in 1998 99 which conflicts with continued adoption but stochastic efficiency frontier estimation which takes account of the labor saved showed that adopters averaged 88 efficiency as compared with 66 for the nonadopters in 1999 2000 when late rains lowered yields the gap widened to 74 for adopters and 48 for nonadopters

time to change what to sow risk preferences and technology adoption decisions of cotton farmers in china this paper examines the role of individual risk attitudes in the decision to adopt a new form of agricultural biotechnology in china i conducted a survey and a field experiment to elicit the risk preferences of chinese farmers who faced the decision of whether to adopt genetically modified bt cotton a decade ago in my analysis i expand the measurement of risk preferences beyond expected utility theory to incorporate prospect theory i find that farmers who are more risk averse or more loss averse adopt bt cotton later farmers who overweight small probabilities adopt bt cotton earlier

input use and market development in sub saharan africa an overview abstract this paper sets forth the background and objectives of this special issue trends in input use since 1980 are reviewed and a conceptual framework is presented for analyzing problems of input use and formulating strategies for resolving them reasons for low levels of fertilizer use by smallholder farmers are summarized briefly the essential points of the papers in the special issue and their implications for further expansion of input use in sub saharan africa are then outlined

impact of institutions and public research on private agricultural research abstract the objective of this paper is to present econometric evidence of the effects of economic incentives and institutions on national aggregate private agricultural r d investments an econometric model of national aggregate annual private r d investment is specified and fitted to panel data consisting of seven eu countries austria germany italy the netherlands portugal spain and sweden over 1984 1995 we find strong impacts of both incentives and institutions on private agricultural r d investment including institutional factors strengthens the story and in some cases greatly changes the results

common failings how corporate defaults are correlated we test the doubly stochastic assumption under which firms default times are correlated only as implied by the correlation of factors determining their default intensities using data on u s corporations from 1979 to 2004 this assumption is violated in the presence of contagion or frailty unobservable explanatory variables that are correlated across firms our tests do not depend on the time series properties of default intensities the data do not support the joint hypothesis of well specified default intensities and the doubly stochastic assumption we find some evidence of default clustering exceeding that implied by the doubly stochastic model with the given intensities why do corporate defaults cluster in time several explanations have been explored first firms may be exposed to common or correlated risk factors whose co movements cause correlated changes in conditional default probabilities second the event of default by one firm may be contagious in that one such event may directly induce other corporate failures as with the collapse of penn central railway in 1970 third learning from default may generate default correlation for example to the extent that the defaults of enron and worldcom revealed accounting irregularities that could be present in other firms they may have had a direct impact on the conditional default probabilities of other firms our primary objective is to examine whether cross firm default correlation that is associated with observable factors determining conditional default probabilities the first channel on its own is sufficient to account for the degree of time clustering in defaults that we find in the data

the status and prospects for genetically modified crops in europe abstract despite the rapid expansion in the global area planted with genetically modified gm crops there has been resistance to this technology in europe this article considers why molecular technologies used to produce gm crops are reviewed and crops currently and soon to become available listed it is argued that the prospects for gm crops depend on 1 consumer acceptance which depends on the perception of the benefits gm crops offer and on confidence in the legislative framework and regulatory procedures designed to identify and quantify any potential disadvantages 2 further technological advances which might reduce any adverse consequences of and enhance the benefits from gm crops 3 patent law which underpins incentives for private investment and largely determines the development of market structure and 4 the relative profitability of gm crops vis a vis conventionally bred varieties which will be a key determinant of the area planted importantly regulations which increase consumer confidence may also raise the costs of planting gm crops and therefore will act to reduce the area planted

can biotechnology reach the poor the adequacy of information and seed delivery abstract the paper examines the expectation that biotechnology can provide significant benefits for smallholder farmers it uses evidence from current seed systems and variety choice in developing countries in particular it examines the adequacy of information flow and the performance of seed markets many of the biotechnology innovations proposed for use by smallholders feature qualities that may not be immediately obvious to farmers implications are drawn for the potential demand for these transgenic varieties the adequacy of seed systems is also examined including the characteristics of local seed diffusion and the experience of commercial seed enterprises the paper concludes that investments in public biotechnology must be accompanied by policies that encourage commercial seed system development and that empower farmers to be able to take full advantage of new technology

supplying crop biotechnology to the poor opportunities and constraints abstract unlike the public sector research that launched the green revolution private firms based in industrialised countries have done the majority of agricultural biotechnology research and almost all commercialisation of genetically modified gm crops this paper examines consequences of the emergence of a few large companies as leaders in the commercialisation of biotechnology by addressing issues of access to technology costs of conducting research and distribution of economic benefits to provide context we first review the status of crop biotechnology research globally who is benefiting from the technology we then analyse the role of intellectual property rights market access and industry concentration public sector research and gm crop biosafety regulations in determining observed r d by firms the paper recommends policy measures that allow transfer of current technology to the poor and generate more biotechnology research focused on problems of the poor

agricultural biotechnology and poverty reduction in low income countries summary while biotechnology innovation is concentrated in high income tier i countries international diffusion of innovations to improve the diet health and incomes of the poorest will be largely driven by tier ii innovators such as china and brazil adoption of beneficial biotechnologies in tier ii and tier iii countries will increase as more transgenic versions of conventionally grown varieties become available and as costs decline which in turn will depend upon regulatory approvals being needed only once for each transformation event and transaction costs for accessing technologies being minimized investments in higher education and intellectual property clearinghouse institutions can greatly facilitate technology transfer

the impact of economic reforms on r d by the indian seed industry abstract declining support for public research and advances in technology and new forms of legal protection have induced more private agricultural research in developing countries this has sparked a debate about appropriate policies regarding private research in this context we examine empirically the consequences of reforms in india s seed policies which loosened various restrictions on the private sector the period since the reforms has shown a remarkable increase in r d effort and an increase in the number of private technology suppliers we argue these changes were largely due to policy reforms

valuing financial health and environmental benefits of bt cotton in pakistan data from a farm survey and choice experiment are used to value the benefits of bt cotton in pakistan unlike previous research on the economic impacts of bt which mostly concentrated on financial benefits in terms of gross margins we also quantify and monetize positive externalities associated with technology adoption due to lower chemical pesticide use on bt cotton plots there are significant health advantages in terms of reduced incidence of acute pesticide poisoning and environmental advantages in terms of higher biodiversity and lower soil and groundwater contamination these positive externalities are valued at us 79 per acre of which half is attributable to health and the other half to environmental improvements adding average gross margin gains of us 204 results in an aggregate benefit of us 283 per acre of bt or us 1 7 billion for the total bt cotton area in pakistan

channels and policy debate in the globalization inequality poverty nexus the process of globalization has led to a much greater integration of the world economy the flows of trade capital labour technology and information across national borders have accelerated since the 1980s and created an environment conducive to faster economic growth and transmission of knowledge it is evident that the forces of globalization provide a strong potential for a major reduction in poverty in the developing world however for a number of reasons brought out in this chapter the positive impact of globalization on poverty alleviation worldwide has not been as substantial as one might have expected in this chapter we explore structural factors and policies within the world economy and national economies that impede the full transmission of the benefits of the various channels of globalization to poverty reduction

assessing the implications of intellectual property rights on plant and animal agriculture many readers over their careers will have shared my experience of initiating some really innovative work only to learn that it had been done and done better thirty years earlier that is one key attraction of research on intellectual property rights iprs for plants and animals they are in the main very recent so whatever one does cannot have a direct antecedent indeed to date little economic research has been completed on the implications of expanding ipr protection for living agricultural inputs protection in the united states for asexually propagated plants has been available since 1930 1990 in canada for sexually propagated plants for over twenty five years and for patented plants for a dozen years see below however only in the last year has significant acreage of patented bioengineered plants some 2 5 million in total been planted with higher levels going in the ground in the united states and canada as this paper is being drafted those crops are primarily herbicide resistant beans canola and corn bt producing corn cotton and potatoes and virus resistant squash james and krattiger only one livestock application to my knowledge has been patented a pig in australia with a controllable growth hormone but as yet it is not a commercial product what has been explored extensively in the literature are expressed concerns about iprs on farm structure ethics university industry relationships information exchange and related matters see e g kloppenburg nor is the debate limited to the united states or developed countries the international enhancement of

economic benefit of powerful credit scoring abstract we study the economic benefits from using credit scoring models we contribute to the literature by relating the discriminatory power of a credit scoring model to the optimal credit decision given the receiver operating characteristic roc curve we derive a the profit maximizing cutoff and b the pricing curve using these two concepts and a mixture thereof we study a stylized loan market model with banks differing in the quality of their credit scoring model even for small quality differences the variation in profitability among lenders is large and economically significant we end our analysis by quantifying the impact on profits when information leaks from a competitor s scoring model into the market

credit contagion and aggregate losses abstract credit contagion refers to the propagation of economic distress from one firm to another this article proposes a reduced form model for these contagion phenomena assuming they are due to the local interaction of firms in a business partner network we study aggregate credit losses on large portfolios of financial positions contracted with firms subject to credit contagion in particular we provide an explicit gaussian approximation of the distribution of portfolio losses this enables us to quantify the relation between the volatility of losses and the determinants of credit contagion we find that contagion processes have typically a second order effect on portfolio losses they induce additional fluctuations of losses around their averages whose size depends on the number of business partners of the firms

credit risk in a network economy we develop a structural model of credit risk in a network economy where any firm can lend to any other firm so that each firm is subject to counterparty risk either from direct borrowers or from remote firms in the network this model takes into account the role of each firm s cash management we show that we can obtain a semiclosed form formula for the price of debt and equity when cash accounts are buffers to bankruptcy risk as in other structural models the strategic bankruptcy decision of shareholders drives credit spreads and differentiates debt from equity cash flow risk also causes credit risk interdependencies between firms our model applies to the case where not only financial flows but also operations are dependent across firms we use queueing theory to obtain our semiclosed form formulae in steady state we perform a simplified implementation of our model to the u s automotive industry and show how we infer the impact on a supplier s credit spreads of revenue changes in a manufacturer or even in a large car dealer we also obtain prices for first to default and second to default basket credit default swaps

counterparty risk and the pricing of defaultable securities motivated by recent financial crises in east asia and the united states where the downfall of a small number of firms had an economy wide impact this paper generalizes existing reduced form models to include default intensities dependent on the default of a counterparty in this model firms have correlated defaults due not only to an exposure to common risk factors but also to firm specific risks that are termed counterparty risks numerical examples illustrate the effect of counterparty risk on the pricing of defaultable bonds and credit derivatives such as default swaps it has been well documented in moody s reports on historical default rates of corporate bond issuers that the number of defaults the number of credit rating downgrades and credit spreads are all strongly correlated with the business cycle this has motivated reduced form models such as duffie and singleton 1999 and lando 1994 1998 which assume that the intensity of default is a stochastic process that derives its randomness from a set of state variables such as the short term interest rate this approach has the convenient features that conditioning on the state variables defaults become independent events and default correlation arises due to the common inf luence of these state variables on the other hand a default intensity that depends linearly on a set of smoothly varying macroeconomic variables is unlikely to account for the clustering of defaults around an economic recession this is evident from a casual inspection of the exhibits in the latest moody s report see keenan 2000 within the usual affine framework one can model the state variables as jump diffusions see duffie pan and single

changing locus of agricultural research will the poor benefit from biotechnology and privatization trends over the past decade the locus of agricultural research and development has shifted dramatically from the public to the private multinational sector three interrelated forces are transforming the system for supplying improved agricultural technologies to the world s farmers the first is the strengthened and evolving environment for protecting intellectual property in plant innovations the second is the rapid pace of discovery and growth in importance of molecular biology and genetic engineering finally agricultural input and output trade is becoming more open in nearly all countries these developments have created a powerful new set of incentives for private research investment altering the structure of the public private agricultural research endeavor particularly with respect to crop improvement

globalisation power and integration the political economy of regional and bilateral trade agreements in the americas this article explores the dynamics of regional economic integration in the americas economic globalisation or an increased volume of trade and investment and increased mobility of capital presents developing countries with new opportunities and challenges in particular the emergence of south east asia as a major site for the production and export of manufactured goods has generated intense competition among developing countries for foreign investment and export market shares in this article globalisation and ensuing competition is linked to the process of economic integration between the united states and countries of latin america and the caribbean fundamental changes in global patterns of investment and trade in combination with international and domestic power asymmetries contribute to the spread and proliferation of regional and bilateral trade agreements rbtas between the united states and its hemispheric neighbours

estimating the impact of transgenic bt cotton on west and central africa a general equilibrium approach summary west and central africa wca s cotton sector is experiencing rising production costs and lower yields reversing decades of growth declining input use soil fertility and inefficient chemical pest controls are contributing factors we evaluate the potential impact of bt cotton on wca using a multiregion general equilibrium model and multicountry estimates of bt induced productivity we find that bt cotton raises growers returns land value and welfare released labor from cotton is shifted to food crops hence reducing labor shortage constraints overall results indicate that potential gross benefits from bt cotton are substantial for wca cotton sector and that the economic costs of nonadoption are equally significant published by elsevier ltd

an argument for deregulating the transfer of agricultural technologies to developing countries in the past few decades many developing countries have liberalized trade and investment removing barriers to imports and allowing the introduction of new foreign technologies unfortunately agriculture often remains outside this reform process regulatory obstacles continue to restrain the transfer of technologies through private trade in seeds and other inputs industrial countries characteristically allow the transfer of private and public technologies through multiple channels developing countries often force technology transfer through a single channel controlled by government agencies with an emphasis on official performance tests this article analyzes the institutional arrangements governing the international transfer of new agricultural technologies examining the cases of agricultural machinery in bangladesh and seed varieties in turkey the analysis shows that allowing the private transfer of technologies and refocusing input regulations on externalities could lead to significant productivity and income gains in developing countries