Is the United States Really Underinvesting in Agricultural Research?

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Abstract
That the level of public investment in U.S. agricultural research is too low is widely accepted. This paper argues that there are two important limitations to the evidence assembled in support of the underinvestment hypothesis: (a) many authors have compared the social rate of return to public investments with the private rate of return to private investments; (b) costs of public expenditures on agricultural research have been underestimated by a failure to account for the marginal excess burden of the tax collection system. Taking these two factors into account, evidence in support of the underinvestment hypothesis is weakened considerably.

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