Abstract:
The genetic engineering made possible by the discovery of recombinant DNA
has played an increasingly important role in agricultural research. The present study
employs a knowledge production model to assess the efficacy of, and relationship
between, basic and applied research in agricultural biotechnology, allowing for both
complementarity and substitutability between these two research endeavors. Practical
measures of basic and applied research outputs, and a paper trail characterizing the
information flows between them, are constructed using a unique database on
agricultural biotechnology patents and patent-cited scientific publications.
Results suggest university bioscience research and graduate education are
mostly complements, or in some cases slight substitutes, for one another. Highly
ranked universities are less efficient than are their lower-ranked counterparts in
producing not only graduate students but the bioscience that is cited in agricultural
biotechnology patents. University R&D expenditures have been inoptimally allocated between post-doctoral fellows and non-post-doctoral inputs. Higher returns to R&D
funding would be achieved by diverting some such funds away from non-post-doctoral
inputs and toward post-doctoral fellows, and away from biology programs and toward
agricultural programs.
Commercial firms' agricultural and non-agricultural (primarily
pharmaceutical) research are complements to one another. Firms' propensity to patent
agricultural biotechnology inventions, rather than hold them as trade secrets, has
increased significantly, while their propensity to patent in non-agricultural or non-biotechnology
fields has fallen. Biotechnology firms have devoted too little of their
R&D expenditures to scientists and engineers and too much to non-salary inputs.
Boosting biotech firms' R&D expenditures would bring only a small change in their
agricultural biotechnology output but a large increase in their non-agbiotech output.
In the production of agricultural biotechnology innovations alone, basic
bioscience and applied biotechnology appear always to be complementary with one
another. But in the production of non-agricultural innovations, bioscience and applied
technology are either complements or substitutes, depending upon the manner in
which R&D expenditures are allocated. In general, choices among alternative R&D
inputs greatly influence the effectiveness of R&D investments in agricultural
biotechnology. Complementarity between science and technology in agriculture
suggests boosting communication between basic and applied research would bring
high social dividends.
