learning about a new technology pineapple in ghana this paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agri cultural technology in ghana we use unique data on farmers communication patterns to define each individual s information neighborhood conditional on many potentially confounding variables we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of their information neighbors who were surpris ingly successful in previous periods the relationship of these input adjustments to experience further indicates the presence of social learning in addition applying the same method to input choices for another crop of known technol ogy correctly indicates an absence of social learning effects jel d83 013 033 q16

behavioural development economics lessons from field labs in the developing world abstract explanations of poverty growth and development depend on the assumptions made about individual preferences and the willingness to engage in strategic behaviour economic experiments especially those conducted in the field have begun to paint a picture of economic agents in developing communities that is at variance with the traditional portrait we review this growing literature with an eye towards preference related experiments conducted in the field we also offer lessons on what development economists might learn from experiments we conclude by sharing our thoughts on how to conduct experiments in the field and then offer a few ideas for future research

social networks and technology adoption in northern mozambique despite their potentially strong impact on poverty agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in mozambique we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters dynamic considerations however suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free ride on the information gathered by others we present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse u in line with information sharing the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others the data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context in particular social networks are precisely identified and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation

spatial spillovers in the development of institutions abstract we examine spatial spillovers in institutional development dependent variables are institutional measures reflecting politics law and governmental administration the explanatory variable of interest is the level of institutions in bordering countries a spatial lag of the dependent variable our spatial model directly leads to the identification strategy for the endogenous spatial lag we implement new results in spatial econometrics to counter missing data problems usually rife in spatial empirics spatial institutional spillovers are statistically significant and economically important a counter factual exercise the non existence of the ussr reveals large direct and indirect spillovers numerous robustness exercises bolster conclusions including yearly cross section regressions fixed effects estimates and adding many extra explanatory variables moreover we provide a new theoretical result showing the robustness of estimates in the presence of omitted variables we extend the core model allowing different effects for better and worse neighbors using inverse distance weights estimating the spatial durbin model and using polity s institutional measure

neighborhood effects and social behavior the case of irrigated and rainfed farmers in bohol the philippines artifactual field experiments spatial econometrics and household surveys are combined in a single study to investigate the neighborhood effects of social behaviors the dictator and public goods games are conducted among rice farmers in irrigated and non irrigated areas in the philippines we find the neighborhood effects but the magnitude and statistical significance of endogenous social effects vary with the irrigation availability type of social behavior and type of neighborhood altruistic and cooperative behaviors are significantly influenced by the behaviors of neighbors only in the irrigated area where social ties are strengthened through collective irrigation management through this effect irrigated farmers social behaviors become similar to those of one another neighborhood effects for cooperative behavior are stronger among farm plot neighbors than among residential neighbors which may reflect their interactions in irrigation management although non dynamic these findings are consistent with the theory of social norm evolution through common pool resource management

non renewable and renewable energy consumption and co2 emissions in oecd countries a comparative analysis abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co 2 emissions using the stirpat model and data from 1980 to 2011 for oecd countries the empirical results show that non renewable energy consumption increases co 2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption decreases co 2 emissions further the results support the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanisation and co 2 emissions implying that at higher levels of urbanisation the environmental impact decreases therefore the overall evidence suggests that policy makers should focus on urban planning as well as clean energy development to make substantial contributions to both reducing non renewable energy use and mitigating climate change

energy and economic growth in the usa a multivariate approach abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between gdp and energy use for the period 1947 90 in the usa the relationship between energy use and economic growth has been examined by both biophysical and neoclassical economists in particular several studies have tested for the presence of a causal relationship in the granger sense between energy use and economic growth however these tests do not allow a direct test of the relative explanatory powers of the neoclassical and biophysical models a multivariate adaptation of the test vector autoregression var does allow such a test a var of gdp energy use capital stock and employment is estimated and granger tests for causal relationships between the variables are carried out although there is no evidence that gross energy use granger causes gdp a measure of final energy use adjusted for changing fuel composition does granger cause gdp

ethnicity and credit in african manufacturing abstract this paper investigates whether market interaction can by itself perpetuate the lack of ethnic diversity that is observed in the business communities of many developing countries using case study data on manufacturing firms in kenya and zimbabwe we find no evidence that blacks or women are disadvantaged in the attribution of bank credit once we control for firm size and other observable characteristics in contrast an ethnic and gender bias is noticeable in the attribution of supplier credit although we cannot rule out the presence of discrimination the bulk of the evidence indicates that network effects play an important role in explaining this bias

irrigation as a historical determinant of social capital in india a large scale survey analysis summary it is widely understood that the same policy interventions can have different outcomes depending on the social structures they are implemented in much less clear though is what fundamentally determines communities social capital or the way individuals in a society interact this study analyzes how irrigation practices a key feature of agricultural organization in india affect different indicators of social capital to this end an informative household survey is combined with detailed historical agricultural statistics on irrigation and grain cultivation the depth of the datasets allows for fine grained analysis of effects of different kinds of irrigation on groups with varying degrees of involvement in the agricultural production process i show a significant negative influence of specific types of irrigation on the prevalence of conflict and an increased likelihood for attendance of public meetings yet it is not possible to establish a broad and consistent relationship between agricultural indicators and social capital which contradicts previous research furthermore specific groups with varying incentive structures based on their land holding status and agricultural engagement appear to be affected by different kinds of irrigation the results underline the need for a multidimensional analysis of both social capital and agricultural organization as well as their interaction i do not find evidence supporting the rice theory of culture

in search of homo economicus behavioral experiments in 15 small scale societies we can summarize our results as follows first the canonical model is not supported in any society studied second there is considerably more behavioral variability across groups than had been found in previous cross cultural research and the canonical model fails in a wider variety of ways than in previous experiments third group level differences in economic organization and the degree of market integration explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation the greater the level of cooperation in experimental games fourth individual level economic and demographic variables do not explain behavior either within or across groups fifth behavior in the experiments is generally consistent with economic patterns of everyday life in these societies

social interactions in asset allocation decisions evidence from 401 k pension plan investors abstract this paper investigates social interaction effects on individual asset allocation decisions using a rich dataset of 159 329 individuals enrolled in 401 k plans we find that individuals are likely to increase decrease their risk shares when their coworkers have higher lower risk exposures over the last quarter the social interaction effects are especially strong among individuals with extreme asset allocations and low equity investment performance we also divide the workplaces into subgroups to examine how social interaction effects vary among coworkers with different backgrounds results from additional tests indicate that estimated social interaction effects are not primarily driven by common preferences common environments or reverse causality

energy consumption economic growth and prices a reassessment using panel vecm for developed and developing countries this paper reinvestigates the energy consumption gdp growth nexus in a panel error correction model using data on 20 net energy importers and exporters from 1971 to 2002 among the energy exporters there was bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption in the developed countries in both the short and long run while in the developing countries energy consumption stimulates growth only in the short run the former result is also found for energy importers and the latter result exists only for the developed countries within this category in addition compared to the developing countries the developed countries elasticity response in terms of economic growth from an increase in energy consumption is larger although its income elasticity is lower and less than unitary lastly the implications for energy policy calling for a more holistic approach are discussed c 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the persistence of treatment effects with norm based policy instruments evidence from a randomized environmental policy experiment during a 1977 fireside chat president jimmy carter famously appealed to american hom eowners to set their thermostats at 65 degrees to help conserve supplies of natural gas and fuel oil norm based strategies are commonly used to influence a range of private behaviors with public consequences including alcohol and drug use gambling and resource consump tion in the last decade these strategies increas ingly emphasize the use of social comparisons to motivate behavioral changes efforts to use such comparisons build upon leon festinger s 1954 social comparison theory which posits that individuals validate the appropriateness of an action or thought through comparison to others a subsequent literature in social psychol ogy argues that strategies based on this theory provide an effective means to promote environ mental conservation see e g tim kurz ngaire donaghue and ian walker 2005 p wesley schultz et al 2007 noah j goldstein robert b cialdini and vladas griskevicius 2008 jessica m nolan et al 2008 in this literature the work by schultz et al 2007 has proven most influential and forms the basis of opower s well cited social comparison approach for

social learning neighborhood effects and investment in human capital evidence from green revolution india abstract this paper empirically identifies social learning and neighborhood effects in schooling investments in a new technology regime social learning implies that learning is most efficient when observed heterogeneity in schooling is greatest the estimates of learning investment rule from farm household panel data at the onset of the green revolution in india show that i agents learn about schooling returns from income realizations of their neighbors and ii the speed of learning is high when the variation of schooling is large thus schooling distribution of the parents generation in a community has externalities to schooling investments in children simulations show that the variations in schooling within and across communities generate variations in child enrollment rate and average household income

economic incentives and conservation crowding in social norms in a groundwater commons abstract price based interventions can be corrective where users extract from a common resource but may also impact existing social norms often crowding them out in contrast i find a pumping fee implemented by a group of irrigators in southern colorado effectively crowds in pro conservation norms enhancing the financial incentive s impact using a unique spatially oriented panel data set of groundwater wells i separate the direct role of increased pumping costs from the indirect effect transmitted through altered conservation norms to quantify conservation behavior i estimate how pumping at one well responds to pumping at nearby wells using instrumental variables to address simultaneity bias and interact that behavior with a difference in difference framework to assess the influence of the intervention in the preferred specification the fee directly accounts for approximately 74 of the reduced pumping and the remaining 26 comes from crowding in conservation norms

the effects of economic and policy incentives on carbon mitigation technologies the ability to estimate the likely effects of potential climate change policies on energy use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions requires an improved understanding of the relationship between different policy alternatives and energy saving and ghg reducing changes in technology a particularly important and understudied aspect of this set of issues is the conceptual and empirical modeling of how the various stages of technological change are interrelated how they unfold over time in response to market forces and the differential impact of various policies for example r d subsidies environmental taxes information programs we summarize several contributions to this literature and suggest promising areas for continued research on empirical analysis and modeling of induced technological change

neighbors and extension agents in ethiopia who matters more for technology adoption improving agricultural productivity is seen as vital to economic growth in poor countries particularly in sub saharan africa where productivity growth has lagged behind that of other continents the focus has therefore been on new technologies particularly the adoption and diffusion of improved seed varieties and the increased use of fertiliser supported by investments in effective extension services it is important to understand how these new technologies spread and the effectiveness of extension services in this process

social capital human capital and the community mechanism toward a conceptual framework for economists abstract for facilitating the development of a consensus on the concept of social capital among economists this paper proposes its operational definition in a way consistent with the definitions of physical and human capital and discusses the relevance on the use of the metaphor of capital for social capital further the unique characteristics in the production and accumulation of social capital in comparison with physical and human capital are identified in relation with the community which is considered the central mechanism to produce social capital the merits and drawbacks of the community relative to the market and the state are examined with the aim of identifying the conditions under which social capital can be supplied efficiently in the direction of promoting economic progress

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

co2 emissions energy consumption economic and population growth in malaysia abstract this study investigates the dynamic impacts of gdp growth energy consumption and population growth on co2 emissions using econometric approaches for malaysia empirical results from ardl bounds testing approach show that over the period of 1970 1980 per capita co2 emissions decreased with increasing per capita gdp economic growth however from 1980 to 2009 per capita co2 emissions increased sharply with a further increase of per capita gdp this is also supported by the dynamic ordinary least squared dols and the sasabuchi lind mehlum u slm u test tests consequently the hypothesis of the ekc is not valid in malaysia during the study period the results also demonstrate that both per capita energy consumption and per capita gdp has a long term positive impacts with per capita carbon emissions but population growth rate has no significant impacts on per capita co2 emission however the study suggests that in the long run economic growth may have an adverse effect on the co2 emissions in malaysia thus significant transformation of low carbon technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency could contribute to reduce the emissions and sustain the long run economic growth

governance and contract choice theory and evidence from groundwater irrigation markets abstract this paper examines the role governance institutions play in the adoption of contracts we develop a simple model of the contracting relationship in a setting where unverifiable outcomes exist and use it to interpret data on groundwater irrigation contracts in bangladesh a distinguishing feature of this market is the variety of village level institutions which impose different degrees of punishment for contract violation consistent with the model we find households adopt contracts that rely on unverifiable outcomes which are not formally contractible when punishment for contract violation is weak conversely households adopt contracts that rely on formally contractible and verifiable outcomes when punishment is severe this evidence is consistent with contract terms being chosen optimally given what is or is not formally contractible

personal networks and nonagricultural employment the case of a farming village in the philippines abstract this article based on an intensive village survey in the philippines analyzes the effects of personal networks on rural villagers access to nonagricultural occupations and the terms of employment given to them a key finding is that personal networks are selectively used to reduce transaction costs and their impacts on employment conditions vary by size and by location of enterprises we find that when villagers are employed in unskilled work at small enterprises those who use family relative networks receive wage premiums however if we limit our sample to small enterprises located near our study village the family relative network premiums become insignificant presumably because of the overriding influence of the community wide network within a narrow local community contrary to the case of small enterprises unskilled workers wages at large enterprises are not much affected by personal networks but are largely determined by years of schooling and work experience the recent developmen

co2 emissions in australia economic and non economic drivers in the long run abstractaustralia has sustained a relatively high economic growth rate since the 1980s compared to other developed countries per capita co2 emissions tend to be highest amongst oecd countries creating new challenges to cut back emissions towards international standards this research explores the long run dynamics of co2 emissions economic and population growth along with the effects of globalization tested as contributing factors we find economic growth is not emission intensive in australia while energy consumption is emissions intensive second in an environment of increasing population our findings suggest australia needs to be energy efficient at the household level creating appropriate infrastructure for sustainable population growth high population growth and open migration policy can be detrimental in reducing co2 emissions finally we establish globalized environment has been conducive in combating emissions in this respect we establish the beneficial effect of economic globalization

energy consumption and economic growth in central america evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for six central american countries over the period 1980 2004 within a multivariate framework given the relatively short span of the time series data a panel cointegration and error correction model is employed to infer the causal relationship based on the heterogeneous panel cointegration test by pedroni pedroni p 1999 critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 61 653 670 pedroni p 2004 panel cointegration asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the ppp hypothesis new results econometric theory 20 597 627 cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption the labor force and real gross fixed capital formation with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the granger causality results indicate the presence of both short run and long run causality from energy consumption to economic growth which supports the growth hypothesis