Estimating the economic rate of return to research in the South African deciduous fruit industry

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Historically, commercial agricultural research in South Africa has been state supported,but due to recent political changes in South Africa this is changing. The politicaltransition has been accompanied by changing economic policies, causing a tightening ofpublic funds allocated to agricultural research. In 1992 the Agricultural ResearchCouncil was formed, primarily to enable greater industry involvement in research as aresult of the expected long term budget cuts in publicly funded research. As a result therehas been an increased recognition of the need to evaluate research in terms of theeconomic returns to investment so that decision makers have hard evidence on which toprioritize their investments.This study employs the well known production function approach to evaluate theeconomic benefits of publicly funded research in the South African deciduous fruitindustry. In reporting the results of the research the study proceeds from an overview ofthe deciduous fruit industry, as well as an analysis of the structure of deciduous fruitresearch in South Africa. This is followed by a description of the economics of researchexpenditure, a description of ex post methods of evaluating the economic benefits ofresearch, and the manner in which the data for the analysis was collected. The analysissuggests there is a statistically significant relationship between research and developmentand industry output as well as industry prices and output. However the results should beinterpreted with care, and more effort should be made to ensure that required data are gathered. Nevertheless, the results show that increased research expenditure m theindustry is justified.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University