An Assessment of Experimental Evidence on Agricultural Technology Adoption in Developing Countries

This article reviews recent results on technology adoption in developing countries, primarily from field experiments. It focuses on studies that highlight three constraints to adoption: credit, insurance, and information. Interventions supplying credit are consistently effective in spurring technolo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of resource economics 2018-01, Vol.10 (1), p.299-316
Main Author: Magruder, Jeremy R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Decision making
Developing countries
economic development
Farmers
field experiments
LDCs
Risk assessment
Studies
Technology adoption
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article reviews recent results on technology adoption in developing countries, primarily from field experiments. It focuses on studies that highlight three constraints to adoption: credit, insurance, and information. Interventions supplying credit are consistently effective in spurring technology adoption for a minority of farmers, while interventions supplying insurance have had more mixed results. This review suggests that one mitigating factor on demand for both of these products is incomplete information, which adds additional uninsurable risk to the technology adoption decision. A broad group of studies identify the presence of strong informational frictions. The review concludes with some potential directions for future research.
ISSN:1941-1340
1941-1359
DOI:10.1146/annurev-resource-100517-023202