Working Paper: NBER ID: w29518
Authors: Jenny C. Aker; Kelsey Jack
Abstract: Many agricultural and environmental technologies require large upfront investments in exchange for longer-term benefits. This time profile of costs and benefits makes adoption particularly sensitive to liquidity and credit constraints, which are prevalent in low-income settings. We test the importance of these barriers to the adoption of an agricultural technique that helps reduce land degradation and restore soil fertility in Niger. We find little evidence that liquidity or credit constraints deter adoption: instead, providing farmers with training increases the share of adopters by over 90 percentage points, whereas adding conditional or unconditional cash transfers has no additional effect. Adoption increases agricultural output, reduces land turnover and leads to adoption spillovers up to three years after treatment. These results imply that training can be a cost-effective and scalable means of promoting the adoption of profitable technologies.
Keywords: environmental technologies; agricultural adoption; training; cash transfers; Niger
JEL Codes: O13; Q16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Training (M53) | Adoption of demilunes (Y20) |
| Training (M53) | Awareness and knowledge about demilunes (Y80) |
| Cash transfers (Unconditional and Conditional) (H53) | Adoption of demilunes (Y20) |
| Adoption of demilunes (Y20) | Agricultural production (Q11) |
| Training (M53) | Agricultural production (Q11) |
| Adoption of demilunes (Y20) | Spillover effects in treated villages (C21) |