Property Rights Protection for Agricultural Biotechnology in Developing Countries: An Econometric Analysis

Abstract

Research and development in agricultural biotechnology is closely related to property rights protection. Scholars have urged that the increasing participation of the private sector in this area requires a higher degree of protection than in previous decades, where government and universities were the main providers of new seed varieties. Most developing countries have been pressured into improving their formal framework for property rights protection by implementing the International Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties (UPOV) standards. Multinational companies in biotechnology and seeds pushed for new legislation and the adoption of international regulations as a condition for new investment in the farming sector. In this paper, we show that the adoption of any regulatory framework for intellectual property rights is not going to be effective if it is not accompanied by a general framework that fosters business investment. The empirical evidence presented in this paper shows that countries with better institutional framework have attracted more investors and traders into the local seed market.