Consumer benefits from new rice varieties in the Philippines

The paper analyzes the gains from the new varieties of rice and estimates how these benefits are distributed between producers and consumers, as well as within each group. The analysis of the distribution of the benefits among individual producers is restricted to a theoretical frame due to the unavailability of data. The paper attempts an empirical measurement of the benefits to consumers in different income categories and offers brief comments on the concepts of consumer surplus and compensating variation in income. For want of sufficient data, nothing is said here about the cost of varietal development except to note that the innovation involved no research expenditures by the private domestic sector.