Institution: University of California, Berkeley
E-mail: Rausser@nature.berkeley.edu
Biosummary: pending
Title: "Negotiating Public/Private R&D Alliances." Co-authors: Leo Simon, Holly Ameden.
Theme: Key 4
The current era of globalization provides many opportunities for transnational cooperation in research and development. In this context, it is vitally important for Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries to assess alternative strategies for potential involvement in foreign/domestic research partnerships. The potential benefits of such partnerships are immense: local assets can be leveraged more effectively, while foreign partners can provide both complementary assets and financial strength. The potential pitfalls are, of course, that foreign interests may capture a disproportionate share of the surplus generated by the partnership. Moreover, the research product may have unintended, negative distributional consequences, such as exacerbating poverty in local communities.
This paper examines how domestic stakeholders can engage successfully with foreign interests in joint research activities. We develop a general model describing the structure of domestic/foreign research relationships and analyze the incentives of the various parties. We pay particular attention to the incentives of the player that represents the domestic public interest and those parties responsible for protecting "sovereign rights." This work provides a foundation for analyzing the existing institutional framework that governs research and development in LAC countries, and for suggesting alternative institutional designs that foster international private-public research partnerships while protecting domestic interests.