Using the farm tractor as a case study, I show that lags in technology diffusion arise along two distinct margins, which I term scale and scope. Though tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much...

When there are competing technologies or products with unknown payoffs an important question is which technology will prevail and whether technologies with different payoffs can coexist in the long run. In this paper, we use a social learning model with local interactions to study this question....

I show that buyer power of firms could either increase or decrease their technology adoption, depending on the direction of technical change and on which input markets are imperfectly competitive. I examine this relationship empirically in a setting that features both concentrated labor markets...

Despite favourable ecological and economic results, many developing countries have not yet adopted an integrated pesticide management (IPM). Given rising marginal costs and diminishing marginal benefits from IPM technology transfer, an optimal control framework is used to identify optimal rates...

Untenable use of factors of production is causing severe land degradation and food insecurity problems especially in developing world. Land degradation threatens the ecosystem health and food security worldwide and will remain high priority on international agenda. Conservation agriculture (CA)...

This paper considers the impact of an agricultural extension program, The Özyeğin Rural Development Program, implemented in eastern Turkey, on rates of agricultural technology adoption. Using a uniquely designed experimental panel survey collected in treatment and control villages before and...

Decentralizing a large, complex national extension system is not easy, but the Government of India appears to be moving toward this long-term goal. Although ATMA model has been successful in addressing many of the extension problems and has shown exceptional impacts during the NATP phase but it...

Precision technologies have been available at the farm level for decades. However, the rate at which adoption occurs varies. Some technologies have been readily adopted while others lagged. Analysis of 608 Kansas farms provided insights regarding duration of adoption. The lag, in years, between...

This paper analyses current technological innovations in agricultural tractors and their possible future directions. The study here suggests three main technological trajectories: (a) safety and warning systems that inform the driver about dangerous situations and communicate any accident to an...

This paper investigates the effects of social network structure on the diffusion of agricultural technologies using household-level panel data from Ethiopia. We correct for possible biases due to the endogeneity of social networks using a social experiment in which we provide mobile phones to...