EMAC fellow, Christos Kolympiris, presented joint-work with Ken Zahringer and Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes at the Copenhagen Conferences on Innovation and Entrepreneurship on Jan. 19. Their research examines factors that influence the amount of time it takes for patents of entrepreneurial biotech firms to issue. The volume of patent applications that are in the queue for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to process have drastically increased, and similarly the time from application to grant date has more than doubled in the last 15 years. EMAC researchers analyzed the factors that cause such delays including the strategic incentives of emerging entrepreneurial life sciences firms.

The conference focused on entrepreneurial firm strategy, the drivers of innovation and the role of the public sector in fostering economic development. Other presenters in the conference included Professor Scott Stern (MIT), Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi University) and Maryann Feldman (University of North Carolina).

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A long stream of academic literature has established that public funding towards research and development matters for economic growth because it relates to increases in innovation, productivity and the like. In the recently published article “Public Funds and Local Biotechnology Firm Creation “ Kolympiris, Kalaitzandonakes and Miller demonstrate that increases in the level of funding for biotechnology research provided by the Federal Government are also closely related to increases in the number of biotechnology firm births in the US. (more…)

In the recently published “The Size and Distribution of the Benefits from the Adoption of Biotech Soybean Varieties” EMAC researchers and collaborators from WAEES and the University of California Davis, measured the global economic impacts of herbicide tolerant soybeans in their first 15 years of adoption. Their analysis finds economic benefits amounting to a total of about US$46 billion. These include benefits to consumers and producers all over the world (86% of total) as well as benefits to the innovator (14%).  (more…)

“Genetically modified (GM) crops, foods, ingredients, and feeds produced from them have been very much in the news. In the United States, voters have gone to the polls in California and Washington to reject initiatives that would have required mandatory warning labels on foods containing even traces of GM crop-derived materials. Connecticut passed a GM labeling bill that will not take effect until five other states adopt similar legislation; such legislative actions are pending in about 20 other states.”

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