From 1997 to 2005, an astonishing 5200 million USD was invested to reduce cocaine production in Colombia, the world's main cocaine producer. However, little is known about the effectiveness of policies targeting coca cultivation. This paper uses a survey-based experiment to evaluate the effects of the two main policies: eradication and alternative development programs.
The authors looked at risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian peasants in one of the poorest regions of the world and compared their attitudes to a standard Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task.
Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian peasants, and these attitudes are similar to those of the university students. Testing for the effect of socioeconomic variables on uncertainty attitudes showed that poor health increased both risk and ambiguity aversion.
In previous research, a systematic analytic-deliberative process for public participation in risk ranking was introduced and successfully tested with participants from the United States using heath, safety, and environmental risks.
The authors studied the potential tradeoff between countries’ investments in mitigation versus adaptation to climate change. Mitigating greenhouse gases may be a public good, but adaptation to climate change is a private good, benefiting only the country or individual.
Numerous experimental studies have lent credence to the hyperbolic discounting model, which posits that individuals are impatient about immediate or near-term consumption decisions, but are relatively more patient over future consumption.
Poor Kenyan farmers in rain-fed, risky environments are reluctant to adopt new technologies with potential production gain because of enormous downside risks.
Risk implications of farm technology adoption vary by technology type. If properly implemented, the safety net program and the weather insurance programs currently piloted in some parts of Ethiopia are actions that could hedge against downside risk.
The authors used a framed field experiment with coffee farmers in Costa Rica after tropical storm Alma to explore how farmers react to different levels of risk to income and productive means from extreme weather under measurable and unmeasurable uncertainty. They also examined whether investment costs to reduce vulnerability exhibit economies of scope.
In most low-income countries, rural households depend on mixed rain-fed agriculture/livestock production, which is very risky. Due to numerous market failures, there are few ways to shift risks to third parties.
Production risks, gender, security of land tenure and regional factors are critical in adoption of farm technologies