Agricultural & Resource Economics Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2739
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item SUBSIDIES FOR DOMESTIC TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION UNDER HETEROGENEOUS TREATMENT EFFECTS(2024) Lopez Aguilar, Javier Alejandro; Battistin, Erich; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Governments and NGOs in developing countries offer subsidies to encourage the adoption of beneficial domestic technologies to generate positive externalities and improve access for poorer households. However, these subsidies may be mistargeted if the benefits come from the continued use of the technology, which is not guaranteed by its initial take-up. This dissertation examines the impact of a subsidy to promote the adoption of a rainwater harvesting (RWH) technology on the water restrictions residents of poor neighborhoods in Mexico City face. I explore this topic theoretically and empirically in three main chapters. In the first chapter, I outline a simple economic model of technology adoption and treatment effects. The model shows how exogenous changes to the subsidy can identify the treatment effects for different types of households, characterized by their willingness to pay (WTP) for the technology. To overcome the challenge of rare exogenous variation in subsidy rates and unobservable WTP, I propose the use of contingent valuation (CV) methods. These methods can exogenously generate variation in hypothetical subsidies and provide insights into the distribution of WTP in the relevant sample. The model is then completed by incorporating the CV information for empirical analysis. This approach may be valuable when randomized interventions are unfeasible due to institutional or budget constraints. In the second chapter, I empirically estimate the effects of the RWH Program in Mexico City on the time households spend obtaining water and the likelihood of postponing daily activities due to the lack of water. I employ the framework developed in the first chapter and local instrumental variable methods for the estimation. The data for this analysis was collected among all program participants in 2021 in partnership with the implementing agency. I find that the usage and causal effects of the RWH technology improve with the households' WTP. High-WTP households save 5 hours per week in water procurement time and reduce postponement of daily activities due to water scarcity by 25 percentage points. Conversely, low-WTP households are less likely to use the technology, yielding negligible benefits. The empirical analysis has significant policy implications. In the third chapter, I simulate counterfactual policies and show that adjusting the subsidy structure could enhance the average benefits of the RWH Program. Specifically, introducing enrollment fees that are a fraction of the total cost of the technology could consistently improve the average impact on recipients. These fees do not seem to disproportionately affect poorer households or those facing more stringent water restrictions, suggesting a potential avenue for policy refinement.Item Essays on Impact of Infrastructure in the presence of market imperfections(2015) Ali, Rubaba; Lopez, Ramon; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a collection of papers analyzing the effect of transport and credit infrastructure on the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. Chapter 1 uses a partial equilibrium framework to isolate the effect of rural transport infrastructure improvement. It obtains an unbiased estimate of transport improvement on high yield variety technology adoption, a mechanism by which infrastructure improvement can affect agricultural return. It finds that although transportation infrastructure improvement significantly increases acreage for high yield variety rice, the acreage for local variety rice does not decrease but remains constant post improvement. The findings suggests there transport improvement needs to be complemented with other measures to yield complete adoption of improved agricultural technology. Chapter 2 improves upon Chapter 1 and uses a rural market equilibrium framework to analyze the effect of rural transport infrastructure on agricultural productivity under perfect and imperfect markets. This chapter, using a theoretical model derives scenarios, (involving relative credit elasticity in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors and elasticity of total stock of labor and capital in the rural market), under which agricultural productivity will be enhanced or deteriorated in the short run and long run under perfect and imperfect market scenarios. It empirically examines the effect of transport improvement on conditions that determine its effect on agricultural return and finds that transport improvement may increase, decrease or keep agricultural output constant depending on its effect on stock of capital and labor in rural markets. Chapter 3 analyzes the role of access to finance in promoting the efficiency and growth of micro-enterprise activities and role of access to finance in participation of micro-enterprises. It finds that access to finance is a significant constraining factor in the growth of micro-enterprises and that the returns to capital invested in micro-enterprises are significantly higher than the interest rates charged by some of the micro-finance institutions that borrow from the government at low rates. The findings of this chapter indicates that there are big gains to be realized from expansion of access to credit to micro-enterprises at reasonable interest rates through the existing network of micro-finance institutions.