The Power of the Provisioning Concept

This paper supports the conception of economics as the social science that studies provisioning processes. Conceptions of economics help us understand the history of economic thought and have methodological, theoretical, policy and strategic significance. When economists are careful to define their discipline without committing ourselves a priori to particular assumptions, methods and theories, but as merely focusing on a class of phenomena, then the result is a more thoughtful and richer economics. The 'natural' choice for this class of phenomena is provisioning systems, because we want to understand as fully as possible the systems that nurture us– meaning that we ought to be interested in monetary and non-monetary mechanisms, self-interest as well as altruism, perfect rationality as well as quasi-rationality, exchange as well as gift relationships, etc., all as part of one discipline.provisioning, definition of economics, economic methodology, history of economic thought, scarcity, comparative paradigms in economics

Grants, Contracts and the Division of Labor in Academic Research

This paper aims to shed light on the division of labor among types of research sponsors and among universities. It interprets data on grants and contracts as conveying information on the sponsorsÂ’ objectives and on the nature of the sponsored institutions. Building on this idea, the paper investigates some notions that appear to be fairly common: That more prestigious universities tend to rely more on grant funding relative to contract funding; that less prestigious research universities tend to rely more heavily on contracts; that grant (contract) funding tends to be associated with basic (applied) research; and that types of sponsors differ in their use of grants versus contracts, depending on their institutional commitment to knowledge as a public good.

The Intellectual Property Strategy of International Agricultural Research Centres

Agricultural and Food Policy,

The Hay and the Carrot: A Model of Corporate Sponsoring of Academic Research

In a moral hazard model with relationship-speci?c investment (?hay?) and limited liability (no ?stick?), we compare two institutional regimes: one without, and one with, ex-post incentives (?carrot?). We examine the welfare implications of introducing ?carrots?. We use this model to analyze corporate sponsoring of academic research. Under restrictive technological assumptions, the introduction of carrots meets certain ciency criteria and cannot make the agent (researcher) worse. These results no longer hold once we allow for a ?bang-for-your-buck?ect - which occurs when the researcher?s following the sponsor?s preferred strategy results in the principal (sponsor) being able to achieve the same results with fewer investment dollars - in conjunction with a concave value function for the sponsor. In this case, the introduc- tion of carrots may be inecient and may make the agent worse. However, if the agent is a monopolist, a renegotiation-proof contract implies that the agent can never be made worse by the introduction of carrots, and carrots never reduce social welfare.

Collective Action in Plant Breeding

Olson (1965) formulated a "Logic of Collective Action". We investigate whether a logic of collective action in plant breeding - and research and development generally - can be constructed. Using a case study on the Latin American Fund for Irrigated Rice (FLAR) as well as other real-world institutions of collective action in R&D, we construct an expanded logic of collective action, which revolves around two core features: Impure public goods and the tragedy of the anticommons. Provisions of FLAR and other institutions are related to game theory and contract theory, and theoretical, methodological and policy implications are outlined.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION: THE CASE OF VILLAGE FUNDS IN ACEH PROVINCE, INDONESIA

Village funds is still a new fiscal policy that was initially launched in 2015 by the seventh president of Indonesia, “Joko Widodo”, as his pilot project. Some villages have significantly benefited from developments and improvements initiated by the policy. However, it also has been identified through various investigative analysis that not all village funds allocations transferred to local governments have been implemented effectively and efficiently. This research examines the relationship between the village funds allocations and poverty alleviation in Aceh province, Indonesia. Using a panel data model that provides random-effects estimations, it concludes the village funds allocations from the period of 2015 to 2018 cannot reduce the poverty rate in 23 regencies/municipalities in Aceh. Fiscal variables, government expenditure and government own revenue have also shown a positive relationship with the poverty rate. Furthermore, with fixed-effects estimation, village funds allocations also show the same result of its relationship with the number of people living in poverty. Meanwhile, one fiscal variable, GDRP has a negative and significant relationship with the number of people living in poverty. Some social variables, such as education and population have also had significant and negative effects on the poverty rate and the number of people living in poverty

South-North trade, intellectual property jurisdictions, and freedom to operate in agricultural research on staple crops:

A biotechnology revolution is proceeding in tandem with international proliferation of intellectual property regimes and rights. Does the intellectual property impede agricultural research conducted in, or of consequence for, developing countries? This question has important spatial dimensions that link the location of production, the pattern of international trade, and the jurisdiction of intellectual property. Our main conclusion is that the current concerns about the freedom to operate in agricultural research oriented towards food crops for the developing world are exaggerated. Rights to intellectual property are confined to the jurisdictions where they are granted, and, presently, many of the intellectual property (IP) rights for biotechnologies potentially useful to developing-country agricultural producers are valid only in developed countries. IP problems might arise in technologies destined for crops grown in developing countries unencumbered by IP restrictions, if those crops are subsequently exported to countries in which IP is likely to prevail. Thus freedom to trade is also part of the IP story. However, using international production and trade data in the 15 crops critical to food security throughout the developing world, we show that exports from developing to developed countries are generally dwarfed by production and consumption in the developing world, the value of these exports is concentrated in a few crops and a few exporting countries, and the bulk of these exports go to Western Europe. Thus for now, most LDC researchers can focus primarily on domestic IPR in determining their freedom to operate with respect to food staples.Intellectual property., Biotechnology., Agricultural research., Trade regulation.,