AgBioForum, vol. 04, no. 2 (2001)
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Item Agricultural Biotechnology and Industry Structure(AgBioForum, 2001) Fulton, Murray E.; Giannakas, KonstantinosIn the last ten years the seed and pesticide industries have undergone a substantial number of structural changes. These changes are due to a number of factors, some of which are common to all industries and some of which are specifically tied to the biotechnology that is increasingly important in the seed and chemical industries. The focus of this paper is on these latter linkages. The horizontal mergers and acquisitions can be linked to R&D costs, economies of scale and scope created by intellectual property rights, and to regulatory costs, while the increased vertical linkages are connected to product complementarity and to the difficulty in enforcing certain types of intellectual property. In other cases, the rise of better defined intellectual property rights has been a factor in the joint ventures and strategic alliances that have occurred. The pricing behavior of the large firms in the seed and chemical industries appears to be strategic in nature, with pricing being influenced by competition from other products and the value created by their products. There is substantial evidence of price discrimination, whether it is in the form of TUAs, differential pricing, or tied sales. The major impact of this strategic pricing is not on the total economic surplus created as a result of R&D, but rather on the distribution of this surplus.Item Decomposing the Size Effect on the Adoption of Innovations : Agrobiotechnology and Precision Agriculture(AgBioForum, 2001) Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge; Daberkow, Stan; McBride, William D.This paper examines the factors that influence the adoption of two emerging agricultural technologies, genetically engineered crops and precision agriculture in corn and soybean production, and contrasts the relative influence of various factors on the adoption decision for these two technologies, with special emphasis on the role of farm size.Item The Estimated Economic Impact of Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin on New York Dairy Farms for the Years 2994 through 1997(AgBioForum, 2001) Tauer, Loren W., 1951-Data from New York dairy farms for the years 1994 through 1997 were used to estimate whether recombinant bovine Somatotropin (rbST) generated profits for adopters. Results show that the estimated profit impact of rbST, although generally positive, was statistically zero. Herd average milk production per cow clearly increased with rbST use.Item Biotechnology R&D Races, Industry Structure, and Public and Private Sector Research Orientation(AgBioForum, 2001) Oehmke, James F.This paper examines research and development (R&D) activity, industry structure, and public sector and private sector research orientations in two transgenic biotechnology races. Key results are: the number of R&D organizations follows a bell curve over time and universities seem to engage in R&D for smaller markets in which multinational firms do not compete.Item French Ag-Biotech SMEs : Development Prospects(AgBioForum, 2001) Mangematin, V.; Lemarie, Stephane; Catherine, DavidEuropean policy to promote small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) creation seems to be successful in France, judging by the high rate of new business formation. Yet French firms remain very small compared to United States (US) firms, employing less than 40 employees on average, as opposed to 140 in the US. This prompts the question of their future. Are all biotechnology SMEs destined to expand, disappear or be bought out? Or is there a place for small businesses that cater to a particular market niche? This paper argues that agbiotech SMEs do have a specific trajectory that will allow them to continue to exist, at least in the medium term. However, they will continue to have a low potential for growth because (1)they are older and more mature than other biotech SMEs and yet remain small; and (2) they currently face a difficult venture capital market because of the uncertainty surrounding investment in agbiotech within Europe.