Returns to Public Investments in Agriculture with Imperfect Downstream Competition
构建多市场框架衡量农业研究收益的规模和分配,考虑上游原料市场、下游成品市场及食品加工环节的不完全竞争,得出原料产出增加是成本降低创新提升社会福利的充分条件。
Abstract A multiple‐market framework is developed to measure the size and distribution of research benefits. The model considers an upstream raw product market and a downstream finished productmarket and allows for imperfect competition in the intermediary food‐processing sector. A central conceptual result is derived: an increase in raw product output is a sufficient condition for cost‐reducing innovations in the farm sector to increase social welfare. A special case of linear farm supply and isoelastic processing production functions reveals that necessary conditions for welfare to decrease are a convergent farm supply shift, an oligopsonistic upstream market configuration, and increasing returns‐to‐scale processing technology.