全球智库信息集成服务系统(G2TT): Technology Adoption Under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia

G2TT

来源类型	Working Paper
规范类型	报告
DOI	10.3386/w21414
来源ID	Working Paper 21414
	Technology Adoption Under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia
	B. Kelsey Jack; Paulina Oliva; Christopher Severen; Elizabeth Walker; Samuel Bell
发表日期	2015-08-03
出版年	2015
语种	英语
摘要	Many technology adoption decisions are made under uncertainty about the costs or benefits of subsequent investments in the technology after the initial take-up. As new information is realized, agents may prefer to abandon a technology that appeared profitable at the time of take-up. Low rates of follow-through (engagement in subsequent investments) are particularly problematic when subsidies are used to increase adoption, in part because they may attract users with a lower value for the technology. We use a field experiment with two stages of randomization to generate exogenous variation in the payoffs associated with taking up and following through with a new technology: a tree species that provides private fertilizer benefits to adopting farmers. Our empirical results show high rates of abandoning the technology, even after paying a positive price to take it up. The experimental variation offers a novel source of identification for a structural model of intertemporal decision making under uncertainty. Estimation results indicate that the farmers experience idiosyncratic shocks to net payoffs after take-up, which increase take-up but lower average per farmer tree survival. We simulate counterfactual outcomes under different levels of uncertainty and observe that subsidizing take-up of the technology affects the composition of adopters only when the level of uncertainty is relatively low. Thus, uncertainty provides an additional explanation for why many subsidized technologies may not be utilized even when take-up is high.
主题	Microeconomics ; Economics of Information ; Development and Growth ; Development ; Environmental and Resource Economics ; Agriculture
URL	https://www.nber.org/papers/w21414
来源智库	National Bureau of Economic Research (United States)
引用统计
资源类型	智库出版物
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/579089
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	B. Kelsey Jack,Paulina Oliva,Christopher Severen,et al. Technology Adoption Under Uncertainty: Take-Up and Subsequent Investment in Zambia. 2015.