To support informed decision making regarding agricultural research innovation systems in the region, IFPRI and APAARI are building a network of experienced analysts in the region who will develop and implement a research agenda focused on agricultural research investments, capacities, and policy developments.
IFPRI and APAARI will support this network by developing joint research projects, strengthening in-country analytical capacity, improving and broadening the analytical coverage, and ensuring that products and services support investment decisions.
IFPRI and APAARI have identified a number of initial research priorities, including:
- the performance, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of agricultural research in the region;
- the impact of past and future research investment levels and resource allocation on the performance of research systems and the agricultural sector more generally; and
- forward-looking analysis on the future performance of research systems under different investment scenarios.
However, this list of research priorities is by no means exhaustive, and countries are actively encouraged to consider other research priority areas through a consultative process with stakeholders to ensure that the research agenda is demand-driven and country-owned, and that it informs local decision making and priority setting.
Selected publications
Stads, Gert-Jan. Bangkok. 2016
Overall, since the turn of the millennium Asia has recorded rapid growth in its levels of agricultural research spending (excluding the private for-profit sector). Most of the growth in regional spending was driven by just one country: China. In 2013, China invested $9.4 billion purchasing power parity or PPP dollars (in 2011 prices) in agricultural R&D. Spending in India and Indonesia has also increased substantially since the turn of the millennium. These countries rank second and third, spending $3.4 and $1.4 billion PPP dollars in 2014, respectively.
Many countries in Asia continue to underinvest in agricultural research, however. Cambodia, Laos, and Pakistan all invest less than 0.20 percent of their agricultural GDP in agricultural research, which is clearly insufficient considering the numerous emerging challenges these countries face, including widespread poverty, rapid population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation.
Revisiting rates of return to agricultural R&D investment
Nin-Pratt, Alejandro; Magalhaes, Eduardo. Washington, DC 2018
This study proposes the use of partial least squares to determine the key parameters of the perpetual inventory method model of capital stock as a new approach to calculate research and development (R&D) knowledge stocks and R&D elasticities. This approach avoids most of the major problems encountered in the literature that lead to obtaining very high and implausible rates of return to agricultural R&D...Using this approach, we obtain an average R&D elasticity for low- and middle-income (LM) countries of 0.23 and an average rate of return to R&D investment of 6.0 percent, bigger than the average discount rate of 4.2 percent for these countries. Results show that 60 percent of LM countries in our sample are underinvesting in agricultural R&D, as they can get higher returns by investing in this activity than in activities that return the social discount rate.
Nin-Pratt, Alejandro. Washington, D.C. 2016
It has been apparent for more than a century that future economic progress in agriculture will be driven by the invention and application of new technologies resulting from expenditure in research and development (R&D) by governments and private firms. Nevertheless, it is conventional wisdom in the economic development literature that there is a significant underinvestment in agricultural R&D in developing countries. Evidence supporting this belief is provided, first by a vast literature showing returns on R&D expenditure to be so high as to justify levels of investment in multiples of those actually found, and second, from available data showing low research effort in developing countries as measured by the intensity ratio (IR), that is, the percentage of agricultural gross domestic product invested in agricultural R&D (excluding the for-profit private sector). This paper argues that the IR is an inadequate indicator to measure and compare the research efforts of a diverse group of countries and proposes an alternative index that allows meaningful comparisons between countries. The proposed index can be used to identify potential under-investors, determine intensity gaps, and quantify the R&D investment needed to close these gaps by comparing countries with similar characteristics. Results obtained using the new R&D intensity indicator with a sample of 88 countries show that the investment effort in developing countries is much higher than the one observed using the conventional IR measure. The new measure finds that countries like China, India, Brazil, and Kenya have similar levels of R&D intensity to those in the United States. To close the R&D intensity gap measured by the new index, developing countries will need to invest US$7.1 billion on top of the $21.4 billion invested on average during 2008–2011, an increase of 33 percent of total actual investment.
Nin-Pratt, Alejandro; Magalhaes, Eduardo. Washington, DC 2018
This study proposes the use of partial least squares to determine the key parameters of the perpetual inventory method model of capital stock as a new approach to calculate research and development (R&D) knowledge stocks and R&D elasticities. This approach avoids most of the major problems encountered in the literature that lead to obtaining very high and implausible rates of return to agricultural R&D...Using this approach, we obtain an average R&D elasticity for low- and middle-income (LM) countries of 0.23 and an average rate of return to R&D investment of 6.0 percent, bigger than the average discount rate of 4.2 percent for these countries. Results show that 60 percent of LM countries in our sample are underinvesting in agricultural R&D, as they can get higher returns by investing in this activity than in activities that return the social discount rate.
Nin-Pratt, Alejandro. Washington, D.C. 2016
It has been apparent for more than a century that future economic progress in agriculture will be driven by the invention and application of new technologies resulting from expenditure in research and development (R&D) by governments and private firms. Nevertheless, it is conventional wisdom in the economic development literature that there is a significant underinvestment in agricultural R&D in developing countries. Evidence supporting this belief is provided, first by a vast literature showing returns on R&D expenditure to be so high as to justify levels of investment in multiples of those actually found, and second, from available data showing low research effort in developing countries as measured by the intensity ratio (IR), that is, the percentage of agricultural gross domestic product invested in agricultural R&D (excluding the for-profit private sector). This paper argues that the IR is an inadequate indicator to measure and compare the research efforts of a diverse group of countries and proposes an alternative index that allows meaningful comparisons between countries. The proposed index can be used to identify potential under-investors, determine intensity gaps, and quantify the R&D investment needed to close these gaps by comparing countries with similar characteristics. Results obtained using the new R&D intensity indicator with a sample of 88 countries show that the investment effort in developing countries is much higher than the one observed using the conventional IR measure. The new measure finds that countries like China, India, Brazil, and Kenya have similar levels of R&D intensity to those in the United States. To close the R&D intensity gap measured by the new index, developing countries will need to invest US$7.1 billion on top of the $21.4 billion invested on average during 2008–2011, an increase of 33 percent of total actual investment.