The Geography of Private Sector Agricultural Innovation in the USA: Evidence from Patents

Abstract

This paper develops a novel estimates of annual private sector agricultural R&D at the level of US states for the period 1976-2014. For each of five different agricultural subsectors, I allocate estimates of national private sector R&D across the 50 states by using the geographic distribution of inventors listed on contemporaneous US patents in the same agricultural subsector. These five subsectors comprise a large majority of total private sector agricultural R&D. I then use this new dataset to document three stylized facts about private sector agricultural R&D: it is highly correlated with the size of the state's agricultural economy (including over time, as well as in cross section), it is highly persistent, and is has become increasingly less concentrated over 1976-2014, though this last trend shows signs of reversing.