Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Technology Adoption, Imperfect Asset Markets, and Risk in Economic Development: Evidence from Dairy Farming in India.

经济学博士论文研究：技术采用、不完善的资产市场和经济发展的风险：来自印度奶牛养殖的证据。

• 批准号: 0721040
• 负责人: Dean Karlan
• 金额: $ 1.6万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0721040&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Technology

This research explores how common constraints on economic behavior such as (1) psychological biases, (2) inability to prove quality, and (3) inability to insure risks affect the development process. These projects will expand the literature on economic development by illustrating how these constraints affect the practice of dairy farming in rural India, and will improve policymaking by bringing attention to these constraints and their effects. The first project studies the "law of small numbers bias" in the context of artificial insemination of dairy animals in rural India. The "law of small numbers" bias is the human tendency to assume small samples of evidence adequately represent the underlying random process. Despite the proven benefits of artificial insemination, Indian farmers use artificial insemination in less than thirty five percent of their inseminations. This project will test whether dairy farmers who experience initial failure with artificial insemination are less likely to try the procedure again even when the initial failure was most likely by chance. This effect would suggest that farmers evaluate artificial insemination based on the small sample of their own experience. Given that most technologies go through a period of experimentation, the results of this study will be useful in understanding the dynamics of technology adoption in other contexts as well. The second project explores the relationship between quality uncertainty and market efficiency in two ways. The first test will estimate whether higher quality cows receive lower prices than expected because their owners have no way to prove their quality; if this is true, it provides another reason why households do not upgrade their stock of animals through artificial insemination. The second test will determine whether farmers wait for their cows to become pregnant before selling them as a way to prove their cow's fertility. If this effect is found, it suggests that quality uncertainty makes cows a sub-optimal savings device. The third project studies how dairying households respond to the risk associated with the gender of calves. The development economics literature has stressed the importance of risk in the lives of the poor because a household living near subsistence will find consumption fluctuations especially painful. Female calves are worth more than male calves because they will give milk and produce more calves. This project will (1) estimate the magnitude of "calf gender risk" that households face, (2) assess whether households use any cow trading strategies to hedge this risk, and (3) estimate whether households that are lucky to have female calves grow their herd sizes faster than households that have male calves. Broader ImpactApproximately seventy million Indian households, which represent thirty six percent of the total number of households, engage in milk production. These households are typically poor, rural households that rely on milk production to supplement their volatile crop based incomes. This research will inform policymakers on increasing the efficiency of dairy farming and thereby contribute to poverty alleviation in India.

本研究探讨了诸如(1)心理偏见、(2)无法证明质量、(3)无法保证风险等经济行为的常见约束如何影响开发过程。这些项目将通过说明这些制约因素如何影响印度农村的奶牛养殖实践来扩展有关经济发展的文献，并将通过引起对这些制约因素及其影响的关注来改善政策制定。第一个项目是在印度农村对奶牛进行人工授精的背景下研究“小数偏差定律”。“小数定律”偏见是人类倾向于假设小样本证据足以代表潜在的随机过程。尽管人工授精的好处已被证明，但印度农民使用人工授精的比例不到35%。这个项目将测试那些经历过人工授精失败的奶农是否不太可能再次尝试人工授精，即使最初的失败很可能是偶然的。这种影响表明，农民评估人工授精是基于他们自己经验的小样本。鉴于大多数技术都要经过一段时间的试验，本研究的结果将有助于理解其他情况下技术采用的动态。第二个项目从两个方面探讨了质量不确定性与市场效率之间的关系。第一个测试将评估高质量奶牛的价格是否低于预期，因为它们的主人无法证明它们的质量；如果这是真的，那么这就为家庭不通过人工授精来提高牲畜数量提供了另一个原因。第二项测试将决定农民是否要等到奶牛怀孕后才出售，以此来证明奶牛的生育能力。如果这种效应被发现，它表明质量的不确定性使奶牛成为次优的储蓄工具。第三个项目研究奶牛家庭如何应对与小牛性别相关的风险。发展经济学文献强调了风险对穷人生活的重要性，因为生活在生存线附近的家庭会发现消费波动特别痛苦。母牛犊比公牛犊更有价值，因为它们会产奶，生更多的牛犊。本项目将(1)估计农户面临的“小牛性别风险”的程度，(2)评估农户是否使用任何奶牛交易策略来对冲这一风险，以及(3)估计幸运地拥有雌性小牛的农户是否比拥有雄性小牛的农户更快地扩大牛群规模。更广泛的影响大约有7000万印度家庭从事牛奶生产，占印度家庭总数的36%。这些家庭通常是贫困的农村家庭，依靠牛奶生产来补充他们不稳定的作物收入。这项研究将为政策制定者提供提高奶牛养殖效率的信息，从而有助于印度的扶贫。