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

本研究探讨了经济行为的常见制约因素，如(1)心理偏差，(2)无法证明质量，(3)无法确保风险，如何影响发展过程。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业实践来扩展经济发展文献，并将通过引起对这些制约因素及其影响的关注来改进政策制定。第一个项目以印度农村地区的奶牛人工授精为背景，研究“小数偏倚定律”。“小数定律”的偏见是人类倾向于认为小样本的证据足以代表潜在的随机过程。尽管人工授精的好处已得到证实，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了人工授精最初失败的奶农是否不太可能再次尝试这种程序，即使最初的失败最有可能是偶然的。这一效果将表明，农民根据自己经验的小样本来评估人工授精。鉴于大多数技术都经历了一段时间的试验，这项研究的结果也将有助于理解其他环境下技术采用的动态。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。第一个测试将估计质量较高的奶牛是否因为主人无法证明其质量而获得比预期更低的价格；如果这是真的，它提供了为什么家庭不通过人工授精来升级动物种群的另一个原因。第二个测试将确定农民是否等待他们的奶牛怀孕后再出售，以此来证明他们的奶牛的生育能力。如果发现了这种效应，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业家庭如何应对与牛犊性别有关的风险。发展经济学文献强调了风险在穷人生活中的重要性，因为生活在勉强糊口的家庭会发现消费波动特别痛苦。雌性小牛比雄性小牛更有价值，因为它们会产奶，产下更多的小牛。该项目将(1)估计家庭面临的“小牛性别风险”的大小，(2)评估家庭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家庭是否比有雄性小牛的家庭更快地扩大牛群规模。更广泛的影响大约7000万印度家庭从事牛奶生产，占家庭总数的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农作物收入。这项研究将为政策制定者提供关于提高奶牛场效率的信息，从而为印度的减贫做出贡献。

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.