Program

18:00–18:30 Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights and Food (In)Security, Dr. Konstantinos Giannakas, Harold W. Eberhard Distinguished Professor of Food Economics & Policy, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

18:30–19:00 The Assessment of CAP Agro-environmental Policies through a Regional Agent-Based PMP Model, Dr. Filippo Arfini, Full Professor of Agricultural and Food Economics & Agricultural Policy, Department of Economic and Managerial Science, University of Parma (Italy)

19:00–19:30 Discussion

Innovation, Intellectual Property Rights and Food (In)Security

Innovation activity is a critical element of business conduct affecting the arrival rate of innovations in the economy, productivity growth and social welfare. To encourage this socially desirable activity, governments around the world provide direct incentives (like R&D subsidies) and Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) that make the innovator the residual claimant of the benefits associated with their discovery. While strong IPRs do increase the private incentives for R&D, they also direct the efforts of profit-maximizing entities to the most profitable innovation activities – innovations whose potential users have the highest willingness (and ability) to pay. As a result, potential innovations addressing the needs of people with reduced ability to pay (like the almost 1 billion people suffering from malnutrition and hunger around the world) do not offer sufficient economic incentives and, as a result, do not receive the attention needed/required for their successful development. Even when relevant technologies are readily available, those who could benefit the most are generally priced out of the market. This market failure/failure of the market forces to address a critically important global problem underlines the need for new (and “new”) policies and strategies. This research/presentation considers/discusses policies and strategies (like R&D subsidies, public R&D, certain licensing strategies and management of IPRs) that can incentivize the development of relevant innovations and increase global access to nutritious food.

Dr. Konstantinos Giannakas

Harold W. Eberhard Distinguished Professor of Food Economics & Policy, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, https://agecon.unl.edu/faculty/konstantinos-giannakas , kgiannakas@unl.edu

Dr. Konstantinos Giannakas is the Harold W. Eberhard Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Economics and the Director of the Center for Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Giannakas received his Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1998. He has been an expert consultant on domestic support for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an affiliated fellow at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, and a visiting professor at: the Mansholt Graduate School of Social Sciences at Wageningen University in the Netherlands; the Department of Economic and Management Sciences at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania in Greece; and the Department of Economics, Politics, and Law at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Vienna, Austria. 

The Assessment of CAP Agro-environmental Policies through a Regional Agent-Based PMP Model

From the Mac Sharry reform onwards, the European Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been characterised by directing agricultural production with payments, subsidies, and other intervention measures (such as production quotas) designed to guide farmers' behaviour. At the same time, subsidies are provided through decoupled, partially coupled and coupled payments. Their size is defined partly at the European level and partly at the national if not regional, level. The latest CAP reform, which combines the green deal strategy with the farm-to-fork strategy, introduces some novelties in its objectives and the mechanisms for granting subsidies through Pillar I and II. It becomes essential for regional, national and European public decision-makers to assess the impact of policies that can be adopted at the regional level to achieve the desired objectives by using resources correctly and supporting the economy of rural areas. The aim of the presentation is twofold: the first is to discuss an ex-ante analysis approach that considers the use of an agent-based positive mathematical programming model that assesses the behaviour of the farms within the European FADN sample. The second objective is to present the results of some agri-environmental policy scenarios concerning the Emilia-Romagna region's agricultural structure.

Dr. Filippo Arfini

Full Professor of Agricultural and Food Economics & Agricultural Policy, Department of Economic and Managerial Science, University of Parma (Italy), https://personale.unipr.it/it/ugovdocenti/person/18292

filippo.arfini@unipr.it

Filippo Arfini (PhD), Full Professor in Agricultural Economics at the Department of Economic and Management Science of the University of Parma (Italy). His research activity focuses on the Economics of Food Quality Schemes and the assessment of Agricultural and Rural Development Policies in Developed Countries. He has participated in several research projects in the framework of the European Research Project (from FP4 up to HEurope), as well as several Research Tenders from DG-Agri and the EU Parliament. The results of his research activity have been published in several Italian and international scientific journals. He was appointed for six years as a Board member of the European Association of Agricultural Economics (EAAE). From 2020 to 2022, he was President of the Italian Association of Agriculture and Applied Economists (AIEAA). He is president of the Master Course on Economics and Management of Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Parma.

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