The major efforts of Rausser has been on the design of private public research development and partnership. He was the first to structure the design of such partnerships to crowd-in public good research. This appears in his award-winning book (Rausser, Ameden, and Stevens 2016). This work is extended beyond research and development partnerships to a host of other opportunities for structuring public-private alignments in goods and services (Rausser and Stevens 2009). He has investigated how the knowledge gaps between the rich and the poor through public private alliances in biotechnology (Rausser, Simon and Ameden 2000). Finally, his fellows address to the AEA focuses on the generation of knowledge assets through public private R&D.
The role of innovation and codified intellectual property has been investigated for the U.S. seed industry on numerous occasions. In one major publication appearing in the Review of Economics and Statistics, there was a formal characterization of the complementary assets needed for innovation in agricultural biotechnology. A number of publications have appeared in collaboration with Alan Marco on the row of patent rights and merger rights and has an explanation of the consolidation that occurred in plant biotechnology (Marco and Rausser 2011; Marco and Rausser 2002).
The Berkeley-Novartis agreement was controversial at the time. Gordon argued that his university’s value is “enhanced, not diminished, when we work creatively in collaboration with other institutions, including private companies.” Gordon was able to leverage his public resources with private money. In doing so, he moved research forward and set an example of how other public institutions can make progress, even in a time of university-budget turmoil. Gordon argued, “Without modern laboratory facilities and access to commercially developed proprietary databases… we can neither provide first-rate graduation education nor preform the fundamental research that is part the University’s mission.”
The research allowed the plant and microbial biology department access to state-of-the-art
equipment and support of researchers that established it as a leading department in its field. An
external review found that the fear of the “sell-out” of the university to the corporate sector never
materialized. This join effort was an act of leadership. It faced opposition from multiple directions, required negotiation skills and persistence, and it has historical importance. Over the last 30 years, government support for research has unfortunately further declined, and the Novartis Deal was a defacto model for much larger agreements between universities and companies that enable many valuable programs in the plant and biological sciences. The Novartis deal allowed Berkeley to maintain excellence in plant biology. Many were critical of forming a strategic partnership with a private company. Gordon wrote, “The question is not whether universities must deal with the outside world but how effectively they do so.”