Learning from Self and Learning from Others: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

Florence Kondylis, John Ashton Loeser, Mushfiq Mobarak, Maria Ruth Jones and Daniel Kevin Stein

No 10545, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Can decentralizing demonstration accelerate learning about new technologies This paper randomizes access to a fixed demonstration kit for new flood-saline-resilient seeds across villages in Bangladesh, with demonstration either by a single farmer or spread across many farmers. In the short run, higher learning from self and others under decentralization increases technology adoption. In the long run, the impacts of any demonstration persist, but the additional impacts of decentralization vanish. A Bayesian model of learning the returns to a new technology suggests belief dispersion caused noisy adoption along the learning path, and farmers’ expected gains from demonstration are four times higher under decentralization.

Date: 2023-08-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/09985910 ... 8e30c0ea53ab56d1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:wbk:wbrwps:10545

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().