We use rich survey data to investigate the economic impact of a climate-friendly rice farming method known as the system of rice intensification (SRI) on the welfare of rain-dependent small-holder farmers in Tanzania. SRI reduces water consumption by half, which makes it a promising farming system in the adaptation to climate change in moisture-constrained areas, and it does not require flooding of rice fields, resulting in reduced methane emissions.

AbstractThis article contributes to a growing body of empirical literature relating credit constraints and incomplete insurance to investment decisions. We use panel data from rural Ethiopia to investigate whether participation in a safety net program enhances fertilizer adoption. Using a difference‐in‐differences estimator and inverse propensity score weighting, we find that participation in Ethiopia's food‐for‐work (FFW) program increased fertilizer adoption in the short run, but not in the long run.

Understanding unethical behavior is essential to many phenomena in the real world. We carry out a field experiment in a unique setting that varies the levels of reciprocity and guilt in an ethical decision. A survey more than one year before the field experiment allows us to compare at the individual level stated unethical behavior with revealed behavior in the same situation in the field. Our results indicate a strong discrepancy between stated and revealed behavior, regardless of the specific treatment in the field experiment.

We investigate the effect of international remittances from migrated family members on informal interhousehold transfers—an issue that has received limited attention in the literature. Using rich panel data from urban Ethiopia spanning 15 years, we show that receiving international remittances increases the value of private domestic interhousehold transfers, whereas receiving domestic remittances does not have any effect. We also show that the transfers sent respond to shocks to a great extent.

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AbstractHow does income uncertainty affect individual well‐being? Combining individual‐level panel data from rural Ethiopia with high‐resolution meteorological data, we estimate that mean‐preserving increases in rainfall variability are associated with reductions in objective consumption and subjective well‐being. Mediation analysis suggests that the estimated reduction in consumption does not fully explain the total effect on individual well‐being. Increased rainfall variability also has a large direct effect on individual well‐being.

Interactions among peers of the same social network play significant roles in facilitating the adoption and diffusion of modern technologies in poor communities. We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial in rural India to identify the impact of information from friends on willingness to pay (WTP) for high-quality and multipurpose solar lanterns.

We use a field experiment to identify how differences in preferences and spousal influence result in low willingness to pay (WTP) for technologies that can benefit all household members. We create income-earning opportunities to empower households and conduct an actual stove purchase experiment to elicit their WTP for fuel, time, and indoor air pollution-reducing improved cookstoves. The decision to buy the stove was randomly assigned to either wives, husbands, or couples using either individually or jointly earned income.

From a theoretical perspective, the effect that remittances have on the labour decisions of those that receive them is ambiguous; the empirical evidence reported in the literature is mixed and shows, unsurprisingly, that the net effect of remittances on labour supply is context-dependent. We contribute to this literature by using a detailed data set for rural Mexico that allows us to understand how remittances reshape rural livelihoods by modifying labour allocation decisions. Following previous evidence, we analyse female and male responses separately.