A Randomized Control Trial introduced sorghum farmers in Burkina Faso to a technology for applying small amounts of fertilizer at the time of planting, and provided a randomly assigned subset of farmers with free kits comprised of mineral fertilizer and improved seed. Results show that a targeted approach is much more effective in encouraging broader adoption in the longterm.
This presentation is based on the AMA Innovation Lab projects for the Mind the Gap Workshop. This workshop was designed to allow for discussion of the pressing problem of the “yield gap” and the constraints to technology adoption that cause it.
In discussing the paradoxical violation of expected utility theory that now bears his name, Maurice Allais noted that people tend to “greatly value,” or overweight, outcomes that are certain. Digging deeper, the Principal Investigator draws on the more recent work of Andreoni and Sprenger on a Discontinuous Preference for Certainty and show that that impact of the rebate framing on willingness to pay for insurance is driven by individuals who exhibit a well defined discontinuous preference for certainty.
This presentation took place at George Washington University, United States on November 6, 2014 describing how behavioral lab experiments have uncovered a wealth of evidence contradictory to standard economic workhorse theories.
This paper presents a novel way to understand the low uptake of index insurances using the concept of discontinuity of preferences through a field experiment with cotton farmers in Burkina Faso.
