This examination of the impacts of market and institutional imperfections on technology adoption found that Ethiopian farmers’ decisions to adopt fertilizer significantly and negatively depended on whether they also adopted soil conservation, but not vice versa. Market imperfections were significant factors in explaining variations in decisions to adopt farm technology, such that relieving market imperfections could increase adoption of farm technologies.

Just how important social context is for voluntary contributions is investigated in a natural field experiment, where subjects made either actual or hypothetical contributions to a national park in Costa Rica.

This study found that both anonymity and information about others’ donations influenced contributions, implying that validity testing of stated preference methods needs to include comparisons of hypothetical and actual behavior for given social contexts.

In a natural field experiment, the authors quantified the importance of anonymity, reciprocity, and conformity through the provision of social reference levels in order to explain voluntary contributions. In the study setting, the effects of the various treatments were small, suggesting that the self-image as an honorable person, irrespective of other people’s opinions, could be an important explanation of contribution behavior. The experiment overall showed no clear evidence that current practice by charitable organizations is inefficient.

The revitalization of Machakos, Kenya, from overpopulation and resource degradation—seemingly by its population growth—has added another round to the Boserupian vs. Malthusian debate, and may make Machakos unique.

This study investigated Machakos’ improvement by looking at the role of social capital with principal component analysis and found significant differences between Machakos and two other Kenyan regions, particularly in the formation of associations.

This paper reviews the state of economic understanding about fuelwood in developing countries. It synthesizes the main results from numerous empirical studies with the intent of identifying implications for policy and pointing out where important questions remain unanswered.

Proceedings of a policy workshop on Policies to increase forest cover in Ethiopia held on 18-19 September 2007 at Global Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The purpose of this paper is to test the absolute as well as the relative importance of these three reasons for non-selfish behavior. This is done by conducting a natural field experiment on voluntary contributions to a national park in Costa Rica.