Competitive Pressure and Technology Adoption: Evidence from a Policy Reform in Western Canada

Shon Ferguson and Rose Olfert
Additional contact information
Rose Olfert: Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, Postal: and Department of Bioresource, Policy, Business and Economics, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

No 966, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We measure the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the adoption of technology for Western Canadian farms, using a unique combination of Census and freight rate data. We exploit the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases in order to identify causal effects of increased competitive pressure. Using a difference-in-differences methodology we find that higher freights rates – and hence lower farm gate prices – induced farmers to adopt new, more efficient production technology. We also find that farmers experiencing the greatest transportation cost increases also increased fertilizer usage and made significant land use changes.

Keywords: Agricultural Trade Liberalization; Export Subsidy; Technical Change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 O13 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-05-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eff and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifn.se/wfiles/wp/wp966.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Competitive Pressure and Technology Adoption: Evidence from a Policy Reform in Western Canada (2016)
Working Paper: Competitive Pressure and Technology Adoption: Evidence from a Policy Reform in Western Canada (2013)
Working Paper: Competitive Pressure and Technology Adoption: Evidence from a Policy Reform in Western Canada (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0966

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elisabeth Gustafsson ().