International Consortium on Agricultural Biotechnology Research (ICABR) 8 th ICABR International Conference on Agricultural Biotechnology: International Trade and Domestic Production Ravello (Italy), July 8 - 11, 2004 Welfare Impacts of Cross-Country Research Spillovers Sergio H. Lence and Dermot J. Hayes Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, U.S.A. Abstract: The present study focuses on the welfare implications of intellectual property protection (IPP) in agriculture, when the associated knowledge has commercial application in more than one country. Attention is paid to the realistic case where countries provide different IPP levels. A model is developed to determine who benefits from, and who should pay for the associated research. A key contribution is the acknowledgement that in many cases the technology used in agriculture is subject to spillovers. This fact has some important implications for welfare analysis and for policy prescriptions on where the burden of paying for the research should lie. Keywords: Biotechnology, intellectual property, research spillover, welfare analysis.