DevLab Seminar with Jenny Aker (Tufts)

Hosted by DevLab at NYU Abu Dhabi

Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Time: 8:45 AM-9:45 AM Eastern Time

Speaker:

• Jenny Aker (Tufts) presents Harvesting the rain: The adoption of environmental technologies in the Sahel, joint work with Kelsey Jack (University of California, Santa Barbara)

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, while 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. We present suggestive evidence that labor availability and non-informational channels help explain the large effect of training on technology adoption. Read the paper.

RSVP:

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.