Mobile phones and the internet have significantly affected practically all sectors of the economy, and agriculture is no exception. Building on a recent World Bank flagship report, this paper introduces a concise framework for describing the main benefits from new information and communications...

This paper addresses an old and recurring theme in development economics: the slow adoption of new technologies by farmers in many developing countries. The paper explores a somewhat novel link to explain this puzzle -- the link between market access and the incentives to adopt a new technology...

This paper uses farm panel data from China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently, China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion of machine rentals and machine services provided by specialized agents, which has...

This paper uses farm panel data from Indonesia to examine dynamic patterns of land use, capital investments, and wages in agriculture. The empirical analysis shows that an increase in real wages has induced the substitution of labor by machines among relatively large farmers. Large farmers tend...

Much has been written on the determinants of input and technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on a factor that has been less well...

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved...

There have been numerous episodes of widespread adoption of improved seed and long-term achievements in the development of the maize seed industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. This summary takes a circumspect view of technical change in maize production. Adoption of improved seed has continued to rise...

Asia's green revolution in rice was transformational and improved the lives of millions of poor households. Rice has become an increasingly important part of African diets and imports of rice have grown. Agronomists point out that large areas in Africa are well suited for rice and are encouraged...

A large national farm panel from India covering a quarter century (1982, 1999, and 2008) is used to show that the inverse farm size-yield relationship weakened significantly over time, despite an increase in the dispersion of farm sizes. Key reasons are substitution of capital for labor in...

This paper examine asymmetric information about migrant earnings and its implications for remittance behavior using a sample of Indian households with husbands working overseas in Qatar. On average, wives underreport their husbands? income and underreporting is more prevalent in households with...