Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction |
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Authors: | Oleg Yerokhin GianCarlo Moschini |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Economics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1070, USA |
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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.
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Keywords: | Biological resistance Intellectual property rights Markov perfect equilibrium Patents Research exemption R& D Sequential innovation |
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