The supply and demand of university agricultural biotechnology research

The objectives and characteristics of university biotechnology research, including its applicability to such industries as agriculture and food processing, arise from formal and informal linkages among university scientists, public and private-nonprofit funding sources, and industry. In the present study I develop, specify, and estimate a model of the supply and demand of university agricultural biotechnology research. The model reveals, among other things, how funding levels and sources both affect and are affected by the basicness and nonexcludability of university research. A national survey of 1,067 bioscientists employed at 80 randomly selected U.S. research universities forms much of the data for testing the hypotheses.;Results suggest a positive relationship between the amount of research basicness and nonexcludability supplied. Higher non-labor budgets boost the research basicness the scientist offers, holding its nonexcludability fixed, but reduce the nonexcludability the scientist offers, holding its basicness fixed. More graduate students and technicians in the bioscientist's laboratory tend to contribute to more applied research, while more postdoctoral fellows tend to contribute to more basic research. Labor inputs in general tend to contribute to more public or nonexcludable research. A scientist's productivity, such as her publication and patent output, and her views about the proper role of science, significantly affect her research choices.;Funding agents are less willing to finance basic than applied research, in contrast to scientists' preference for more basic research. Federal agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health, lead university agricultural biotechnology research toward more nonexcludable objectives than do other sources. Not surprisingly, industry funding, more than any other, steers academic scientists toward the applied end of the research spectrum and to more privately excludable research. Compared with other federal agencies, USDA funding encourages more applied and more excludable research.;To advance the more basic end of university agricultural biotechnology research, government might direct funding toward more basically-oriented disciplines such as cell & molecular biology or biochemistry, or toward such relatively basic research fields as plant/animal protection or production. Channeling government support through the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation would lead to more nonexcludable research findings.