Simulating the spillover benefits from R&D by a small producer country embedded in a co-authorship network: Aquaculture R&D in Germany

Aquaculture is increasingly important for the future supply of fish because of steadily increasing demand while supply from fisheries is stagnating. Despite the small size of their aquaculture industries some German states have initiated sizeable aquaculture R&D-programs to foster local aquaculture industries. Three scenarios are computed with IFPRI´s DREAM-model to estimate the economic effects of aquaculture R&D conducted in Germany. We correlate the size of R&D-spillovers across EU-15-countries to the strength of fishery and aquaculture research cooperation that have been measured in a bibliometric study. The results of this paper provide important implications for political decisions concerning the allocation of public funds for R&D-projects in aquaculture.