technology adoption impact and extension in developing countries agriculture a review of the recent literature given the stagnant agricultural productivity and persistent food insecurity in low income countries notably in sub saharan africa ssa there has been continued interest in the adoption of new technology and its impact on productivity in these regions interestingly there are signs of green revolution in maize and rice in ssa reflected in sharply increasing yield trends in advanced regions to increase crop yields and sustain yield gains recent case studies of technology adoption unanimously recommend the adoption of integrated farm management systems particularly in ssa on the other hand since the 2010s there have been increasing numbers of studies on social network or farmer to farmer technology extension these studies explore more efficient extension systems than traditional public sector extension approaches this article reviews both recent case studies of technology adoption and its productivity impacts as well as studies on agricultural extension to identify common findings shortcomings and major remaining issues

adoption of improved maize varieties in southern ethiopia factors and strategy options abstract this paper identifies factors that influence the decision behavior of farmers in southern ethiopia in adopting improved maize varieties by estimating a logistic regression data for this study came from 222 farmers interviewed as part of a national adoption survey conducted in three selected maize growing administrative zones of southern ethiopia in 1998 the paper also assesses the impact of pure and mixed strategy options on the probability of adoption of improved maize varieties through simulation under different scenarios as far as pure strategies are concerned the credit strategy is more powerful than the others in terms of raising the probability of adoption however results from the analysis of pure versus mixed strategies imply that mixed strategies are no necessarily much better than pure strategies

environmental kuznets curve hypothesis in pakistan cointegration and granger causality abstract the paper is an effort to fill the gap in the energy literature with a comprehensive country study of pakistan we investigate the relationship between co2 emissions energy consumption economic growth and trade openness in pakistan over the period of 1971 2009 bounds test for cointegration and granger causality approach are employed for the empirical analysis the result suggests that there exists a long run relationship among the variables and the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is supported the significant existence of ekc shows the country s effort to condense co2 emissions and indicates certain achievement of controlling environmental degradation in pakistan furthermore we find a one way causal relationship running from economic growth to co2 emissions energy consumption increases co2 emissions both in the short and long runs trade openness reduces co2 emissions in the long run but it is insignificant in the short run in addition the change of co2 emissions from short run to the long span of time is corrected by about 10 yearly

farm level fertilizer demand in java a meta production function approach this paper models seed variety choice and the demand for variable inputs as jointly determined by profit maximizing cultivators the approach parallels that of hayami and ruttan who postulated that changes in the output fertilizer price ratio induce movements along a meta fertilizer response function the envelope of individual variety specific response surfaces ignoring the possibility of seed variety switching leads to underestimates of fertilizer demand elasticities in addition estimation with samples reflecting a single seed variety may involve serious selection bias a two stage procedure which adjusts for selectivity bias is used to estimate the model with farm level data from java

adoption and the impact of system of rice intensification on rice yields and household income an analysis for india this paper examines the determinants and impacts of the adoption of five mutually exclusive practices system of rice intensification sri on yields and household incomes using a multinomial endoge

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

formal and informal seed systems in kenya supporting indigenous vegetable seed quality indigenous vegetables play an important role in kenyan food security but production is limited by poor seed quality traditionally seeds have been traded through informal networks but a new form

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

information as regulation the effect of community right to know laws on toxic emissions abstract there is growing academic and policy level interest in the use of information as quasi regulatory mechanisms such as toxic release inventory tri and green labels mandatory disclosure requirements have been touted as market based incentives that may affect firm behavior we provide new evidence on the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by examining firm behavior in response to disclosures of tri emissions we find that firms with the largest stock price decline on the day this information became public subsequently reduced emissions more than their industry peers this is consistent with the view that financial markets may provide strong incentives for firms to change their environmental behavior

factors that drive chinese listed companies in voluntary disclosure of environmental information based on the institutional theory this article attempts to examine two consecutive questions regarding the impact of various factors on corporate decision in environmental information disclosure eid 1 whether or not to disclose and 2 the level of disclosure the relevance of these factors is empirically tested using data collected from publicly listed manufacturing companies from 2006 to 2008 in china some interesting findings appear we find that firms that are state owned those that operate in environmentally sensitive industries those having more industrial peers engaged in eid and those with better reputation are more likely to disclose environmental information when it comes to the content of eid variables that attempt to capture external institutional pressures exhibit either no or weak explanatory power only the variable of organizational image and reputation is demonstrated to have a significant impact on both the act and the content of eid this study provides a snapshot of the dialogues between constituencies in the organizational field and eid development

environmental kuznets curve for co2 in canada abstract according to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis the relationship between per capita gdp and per capita pollutant emissions has an inverted u shape this implies that past a certain point economic growth may actually be profitable for environmental quality most studies on this subject are based on estimating fully parametric quadratic or cubic regression models while this is not technically wrong such an approach somewhat lacks flexibility since it may fail to detect the true shape of the relationship if it happens not to be of the specified form we use semiparametric and flexible nonlinear parametric modeling methods in an attempt to provide more robust inferences we find little evidence in favour of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis our main results could be interpreted as indicating that the oil shock of the 1970s has had an important impact on progress towards less polluting technology and production

adoption of agricultural innovations as a two stage partial observability process in this paper we reconsider the appropriateness of certain statistical analyses in innovation adoption studies and suggest that partial observability models may sometimes be more useful the proposed models allow for a flexible specification of the process of adoption from one stage to two stages facilitate the modelling of non adopters and remedy the violation of the assumption of full information an application to the adoption of organic cultivation in greece demonstrates the relative merits of the proposed analysis

agricultural technology crop income and poverty alleviation in uganda summary this paper evaluates the ex post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and poverty in rural uganda the study utilizes cross sectional data of 927 households collected in 2006 from seven districts in uganda using propensity score matching methods we find that adopting improved groundnut varieties technology significantly increases crop income and reduces poverty the positive and significant impact on crop income is consistent with the perceived role of new agricultural technologies in reducing rural poverty through increased farm household income this study supports broader investment in agriculture research to address vital development challenges reaching the poor with better technologies however requires policy support for improving extension efforts access to seeds and market outlets that simulate adoption

peasant household behaviour with missing markets some paradoxes explained a model of peasant household behavior under varying degrees of household specific food and labor market failures is constructed to show that these structural features can explain several well known patterns of peasant response which have often been attributed to peculiar motives presumed specific to peasants the model explains sluggish response to cash crops prices and high instability in perceived food and labor scarcities the key role of manufactured consumer goods prices in stimulating peasants effort in cash crops production the effectiveness of taxation as opposed to incentives in stimulating cash crops production and the key role of technological change in food production to enhance cash crop production results are obtained analytically in the case of one market failure and by numerical simulation with more than one

taking a new look at empirical models of adoption average treatment effect estimation of adoption rates and their determinants this article shows that the observed sample adoption rate does not consistently estimate the population adoption rate even if the sample is random it is proved that instead the sample adoption rate is a consistent estimate of the population joint exposure and adoption rate which does not inform about adoption per se likewise it is shown that a model of adoption with observed adoption outcome as a dependent variable and where exposure to the technology is not observed and controlled for cannot yield consistent estimates of the determinants of adoption the article uses the counterfactual outcomes framework to show that the true population adoption rate corresponds to what is defined in the modern policy evaluation literature as the average treatment effect ate which measures the effect or impact of a treatment on a person randomly selected in the population in the adoption context a treatment corresponds to exposure to the technology the article uses the ate estimation framework to derive consistent nonparametric and parametric estimators of population adoption rates and their determinants and applies the results to consistently estimate the population adoption rates and determinants of the nerica new rice for africa rice varieties in c ote d ivoire the ate methodological approach developed in the article has significant policy implications with respect to judging the intrinsic merit of a new technology in terms of its potential demand by the target population independently of issues related to its accessibility and in terms of the decision to invest or not in its wide scale dissemination

disclosure of environmental violations and the stock market in the republic of korea for almost 20 years the ministry of environment of the republic of korea has published on a monthly basis a list of enterprises that fail to comply with national environmental laws and regulations in this paper the authors examine the reaction of investors to the publication of these lists and show that enterprises appearing on these lists have experienced a significant decline in their market valuation firms in developing countries are often said to have no incentives to invest in pollution control because they typically face weak monitoring and enforcement of environmental regulations the findings of the authors however indicate that the inability of formal institutions to control pollution through fines and penalties may not be as serious an impediment to pollution control as is generally argued environmental regulators in developing countries could harness market forces by introducing structured programs to release firm specific information about environmental performance

an empirical analysis of fertilizer use in pakistan one of the stylized facts in developing countries is the wide variation in agricultural per acre input and output levels across farm households here we focus on the variation in the level of chemical fertilizer applied in particular to high yielding wheat the model used to explain the variation in fertilizer input across farms incorporates the process by which zeros are generated in particular differentiating between households who do not apply because of lack of access and those who do not apply out of choice we find that access is positively correlated with farm size but that among users per acre fertilizer levels decrease with farm size we interpret the latter by appealing to input choice under uncertainty with this interpretation our results suggest that although larger farms have a higher level of non stochastic wealth which in the presence of decreasing absolute risk aversion has the effect of increasing fertilizer intensity with farm size the presence of increasing relative risk aversion means that the net relationship between farm size and fertilizer intensity is negative this latter affect appears to dominate any tendancy for higher fertilizer intensity on larger farms arising from better knowledge or irrigation facilities

environmental kuznets curve and financial development in pakistan abstract in this study we analyzed the effects of financial development per capita real income the square of per capita real income per capita energy consumption and openness on per capita co 2 emissions for pakistan during 1972 2013 the bound f test for cointegration yielded evidence of a long term relationship among these variables the results confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in pakistan for both the short and long term this finding indicates that at the initial stage of development the level of co 2 increases with income and after some threshold level of income this relationship may change from positive to negative as more efficient infrastructure and energy efficient technology are implemented during the development process of the country the findings of this study also reveal a significantly positive sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development has occurred at the expense of environmental quality the results further indicate that the key contributing factors to carbon emissions in pakistan are income energy consumption and financial development in addition the openness variable has no significant influence on carbon emission in either the short or long term

what determines the inclusion in a sustainability stock index a panel data analysis for european companies this paper examines the determinants of the inclusion of european companies in the dow jones sustainability world index and the dow jones stoxx sustainability index in doing so the paper contributes to the micro econometric literature analyzing the determinants and economic effects of sustainability performance in three respects first it examines a broad measure of corporate sustainability behavior and thus does not only apply narrow measures of environmental performance such as toxic releases which is common in other studies second the paper examines the effect of internal assessment processes regarding corporate sustainability performance by an independent financial service institution finally it analyzes the influence of unobserved heterogeneity in the framework of panel data models the analysis shows that the probability for an inclusion in the sustainability indexes strongly decreases if a company does not respond to the written survey of the assessing institution furthermore time invariant random effects and an autoregressive structure in the stochastic components are important factors in contrast a significant influence of past economic performance cannot be confirmed robustly

the impact of environmental management on firm performance environmental management has the potential to play a pivotal role in the financial performance of the firm many individuals suggest that profitability is hurt by the higher production costs of environmental management initiatives while others cite anecdotal evidence of increased profitability a theoretical model is proposed that links strong environmental management to improved perceived future financial performance as measured by stock market performance the linkage to firm performance is tested empirically using financial event methodology and archival data of firm level environmental and financial performance significant positive returns were measured for strong environmental management as indicated by environmental performance awards and significant negative returns were measured for weak environmental management as indicated by environmental crises the implicit financial market valuation of these events also was estimated cross sectional analysis of the environmental award events revealed differences for first time awards and between industries first time award announcements were associated with greater increases in market valuation although smaller increases were observed for firms in environmentally dirty industries possibly indicative of market skepticism this linkage between environmental management and financial performance can be used by both researchers and practitioners as one measure of the benefits experienced by industry leaders and as one criterion against which to measure investment alternatives

market imperfections access to information and technology adoption in uganda challenges of overcoming multiple constraints limited empirical evidence exists on how multiple binding constraints influence the adoption of improved technologies by smallholder farmers this article uses the case of groundnut variety adoption in uganda to investigate the role of information seed supply and credit constraints in conditioning technology uptake new data from a household survey in seven groundnut growing districts n 945 indicate that 8 of farmers lack information on new varieties while 18 and 6 of farmers respectively cannot adopt mainly due to seed supply and capital constraints a tobit type specification that considers all nonadopters as being uninterested in the technology i e corner solutions would lead to inconsistent parameter estimates and incorrect conclusions in this context we therefore estimate a modified multi hurdle specification of demand for new varieties taking into account how information seed supply and capital constraints jointly determine adoption probability and intensity the study reveals new empirical insights on why agricultural technology adoption in africa has lagged behind slow uptake is not mainly due to a lack of economic incentives but rather a reflection of information seed supply and credit constraints that prevent farmers from translating their desired demand into adoption of modern varieties policy implications are discussed

heterogeneity of commercialization gains in the rural economy farmers in low income rural economies often fail to switch to cash crops from staple production despite the positive income effects of commercialization expected by policy makers the literature suggests that market failures prevent households from cash crop adoption but remains inconclusive regarding farmers motives and the effects of commercialization this article contributes to the debate by offering an original approach to the analysis of commercialization outcomes and farmers decisions it consists of applying a model with essential heterogeneity and a semiparametric estimation technique to analyzing harvest value returns to cash cropping using malawian data we show considerable heterogeneity in harvest value returns to cash cropping both within and between groups of farmers choosing different crop portfolios importantly the results imply rational choices based on comparative advantage considerations of farming households farmers self select into the activity where they expect higher gains and adopt cash crops when facing weaker market barriers

nonfarm employment agricultural intensification and productivity change empirical findings from uganda this article uses panel data from the living standards measurement study integrated surveys on agriculture for uganda to assess the farm level effects of nonfarm employment on agricultural intensification and productivity change a sample selection model is used to account for both unobserved heterogeneity and potential simultaneity between agricultural production and nonfarm income results show that nonfarm employment can have differential impacts on farm technology intensity and productivity nonfarm income is found to have a positive impact on farm hired labor and improved seed intensity a negative effect on on farm family labor use and no significant impact on fertilizer soil water management and joint use of farm technologies the econometric evidence also indicates that agricultural productivity declines as nonfarm income increases taken together our findings reveal important trade offs between nonfarm employment and income and farm productivity growth under smallholder agriculture the results indicated that targeted policies are required to reduce these potential trade offs between nonfarm employment and agricultural intensification and productivity change

the intra industry effect of corporate environmental violation an exploratory study abstract regenerative sustainability at firm level is a matter of proactive corporate environmental strategy to prevent firms from committing environmental misconducts which not only do harm to the ecological environment but also arouse negative reactions from stakeholders drawing on signaling theory this study explores the intra industry effect of corporate environmental violations of chinese listed companies we propose that the environmental violation announcement carries predominantly negative information regarding rival firms and thus the stock market reacts negatively not only to the firms who commit environmental violations but also to rival firms empirical results corroborate the intra industry contagion effect for rival firms whose cash flow characteristics are similar to those of the violating firm and also reveal that official disclosure of environmental violations committed by a state owned enterprise soe inflicts an additional adverse effect on rival soes to some extent additionally the intra industry effect is shown to be more profound in non environmentally sensitive industries finally the stock market is found to be more sensitive to environmental violations occurring within final goods industries than intermediate goods industries

partnership firms reputation and human capital in human capital intensive industries where it is difficult to contract upon the training effort of skilled agents a socially suboptimal level of training may occur we show how partnership organisations can overcome this problem by tying human and financial capital partnerships are opaque so that the willingness of clients to pay depends upon reputation partnerships are illiquid and partners must stay with the firm until clients discover their type and update the firm s reputation this renders unskilled agents who will aversely affect reputation unwilling to accept partnerships skilled agents therefore train the next generation so as to ensure that there is an adequate market for their own shares we comment upon the salient differences between partnerships and joint stock firms

investigating external and internal pressures on corporate environmental behavior in papermaking enterprises of china abstract as china s ecological environmental problem becomes severe corporate environmental behavior ceb has become the focus of a range of stakeholders policy makers and the whole society since the operating activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution this study used a questionnaire survey and structural equation model sem to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures eip on driving ceb data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in china the mechanism of eip effects on ceb was tested employing sem through path analysis using amos 21 0 the results showed that government pressure economic pressure and internal pressure played significant positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in china economic pressure was the most important factor on environmental behaviors including defensive accommodative and proactive behaviors of papermaking companies furthermore the role of internal pressure on ceb defensive and proactive was second only to economic pressure while the role of government pressure on ceb was much weaker than our expectation however the role of social pressure which was imposed by general public and environmental non governmental organizations ngos was not significant thus policy makers should emphasize on the interactions of economic mechanism government regulation and internal incentive mechanism to stimulate firms to adopt active environmental behavior more concerns from the general public shall be addressed to enhance their driving effect on ceb in chinese papermaking industry

the diffusion of new agricultural technologies the case of crossbred cow technology in tanzania the recent literature on agricultural technology adoption shows that diffusion of new technologies varies significantly across space and time furthermore puzzles exist about why some seemingly profitable technologies are not adopted especially in livestock production we employ a hazard or duration function to explain diffusion of crossbred cow technology in a unique sample of tanzania farmers a farmer s adoption of crossbred technology depends positively on the proximity of his farm to other users on his schooling and on his access to credit and contact with extension agents

the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on co2 emissions in south africa abstract this paper explores the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on environmental performance using time series data over the period 1965 2008 in case of south africa the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration has been used to test the long run relationship among the variables while short run dynamics have been investigated by applying error correction method ecm the unit root properties of the variables are examined by applying saikkonen and lutkepohl 2002 econometric theory 18 313 348 structural break unit root test our findings confirmed long run relationship among the variables results showed that a rise in economic growth increases energy emissions while financial development reduces it coal consumption has significant contribution to deteriorate environment in south african economy trade openness improves environmental quality by reducing the growth of energy pollutants our empirical results also verified the existence of environmental kuznets curve this paper opens up new insights for south african economy to sustain economic growth by controlling environment from degrdation through efficient use of energy

gender and the dynamics of technology adoption empirical evidence from a household level panel data very few empirical studies account for the dynamic nature of the agricultural technology adoption decision and none of these explores if this dynamic nature depends on the gender of the decision maker using four waves of a household level ugandan panel data this is the first empirical analysis to account for self learning one s own adoption experience in explaining current adoption decision in a developing country context and the first to study the interaction between self learning and gender technology adoption is defined as adoption of hybrid seed inorganic fertilizer or pesticides our results indicate that the dynamic panel data probit model is superior to its static counterpart in the sense that self learning captured by lagged technology adoption indicators is by far the most important determinant of technology adoption we also find a weaker impact of self learning for female headed households than male headed households female headed households face fewer learning opportunities which produce a lower self learning impact in later periods further exacerbating the gap in technology adoption among male and female headed households

community pressure and clean technology in the informal sector an econometric analysis of the adoption of propane by traditional mexican brickmakers abstract in many developing countries the informal sector comprised of low technology unlicensed micro enterprises is a major source of pollution environmental management in this sector is exceptionally challenging though clean technologies offer a means of mitigating the problem to our knowledge there has been no rigorous empirical research on why informal or even small scale firms do and do not adopt them as a first step toward filling this gap this paper presents the results of an econometric analysis of the diffusion of propane among informal traditional brickmakers in cd juarez mexico a leading source of air pollution owing to their reliance on cheap highly polluting fuels such as used tires and scrap wood the two key policy implications of our analysis are that 1 it is possible to successfully promote the adoption of a clean technology by intensely competitive informal firms even when the new technology significantly raises variable costs and 2 community pressure applied by competing firms and private sector local organizations can generate incentives for adoption

event studies in economics and finance the event study is an important research tool in economics and finance the goal of an event study is to measure the effects of an economic event on the value of firms event study methods exploit the fact that given rationality in the marketplace the effects of an event will be reflected immediately in security prices thus the impact can be measured by examining security prices surrounding the event in this paper event study methods are described including some of the potential complications an example is included to illustrate the approach