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Abstract
Intellectual Property Regimes (IPRs) have been justified on the basis that they promote
innovation, but it is not always clear that they do so. Empirical studies of IPRs in an
Australian context have been limited. Plant variety protection is one form of IPR. The passing
of the Australian Plant Breeder’s Rights Act of 1994 has been followed by significant
commercialisation of the wheat breeding industry. The purpose of this paper is to consider
whether this commercialisation has benefited wheat productivity through varietal
improvement. We estimate a linear crop production function, using a random effects
Hausman Taylor estimator to evaluate differences in genetic contributions to productivity
between public and private wheat varieties commercially released in NSW over the period
1992-2009 using crop varietal data. Results from the Hausman Taylor estimator show that
private varieties, on average, have outperformed public varieties over the period, suggesting
that Plant Breeder’s Rights has promoted productive innovation in wheat. However, when we
consider the best performing genetics of the varieties, public varieties have, in some years,
outperformed privately bred varieties.