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Widespread adoption of efficient irrigation technologies, including drip irrigation, has been proposed as a means of limiting groundwater overexploitation, especially in the intensively farmed and water-stressed South Asia region. This paper reports on a randomized controlled trial conducted in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to evaluate the potential productivity and water-saving benefits of smallholder drip irrigation. A group of well-owners was encouraged to adopt drip irrigation through a subsidy scheme, whereas a control group was left to its own devices. The results indicate that, after three years, the drip group shifted into more remunerative and irrigation reliant crops, enjoyed higher agricultural revenue, and transferred (primarily through cash sales) more of its groundwater to adjacent plots. In terms of groundwater pumping, which has zero marginal price in this setting, there is precisely zero difference between the drip and control groups. The evidence thus suggests that drip adoption in South India, while increasing irrigation efficiency, will not save groundwater.

Zoning laws that restrict rural land to agricultural production pose an important institutional barrier to industrial development. This paper studies the effects of the Industrial Areas (IA) program in Karnataka, India, which rezoned agricultural land for industrial use, but without the economic incentives common with other place-based policies. This paper finds that the program caused a large increase in firm creation and employment in villages overlapping the IAs. Moreover, the surrounding areas experienced spillover effects, with workers shifting from agricultural to non-agricultural employment, and entrepreneurs establishing numerous small-scale service sector and agricultural firms.

Assessing the contribution of mobility declines to the control of Covid-19 diffusion is an urgent challenge of global import. We analyze the temporal correlation between transmission rates (estimated effective reproduction numbers) and societal mobility levels using daily mobility data from Google and Apple in an international panel of 99 countries and a panel of all states in the United States. Reduced form regression estimates that flexibly control for time trends suggest that a 10 percentage point reduction in mobility is associated with a 0.04-0.07 reduction in the value of the effective reproduction number, R(t), depending on geographical region and modelling choice. According to these estimates, to avoid the critical value of R = 1, easing mobility restrictions may have to be limited or delayed until other non-mobility related preventative measures reduce R to a level of approximately 0.7 in Europe, 0.75 in Asia, and 0.8 in the United States. Given gaps in data availability and inference challenges, these estimates should be interpreted with caution.

Many development programs that attempt to disseminate improved technologies are limited in duration, either because of external funding constraints or an assumption of impact sustainability; but there is limited evidence on whether and when terminating such programs is efficient. We provide novel experimental evidence on the impacts of a randomized phase-out of an extension and subsidy program that promotes improved inputs and cultivation practices among smallholder women farmers in Uganda. We find that phase-out does not diminish the use of either practices or inputs, as farmers shift purchases from NGO-sponsored village-based supply networks to market sources. These results indicate short-term interventions can suffice to trigger persistent effects, consistent with models of technology adoption that emphasize learning from experience.

Like many developing countries, India features a variety of land-use restrictions that make it difficult to establish industrial firms on agricultural lands. Such policies have received some of the blame for the slow pace of industrialization, and there is widespread agreement on the need for reform. Traditional agrarian economies, however, have many features that may serve as barriers to industrialization, making it unclear that land-use reform would be sufficient for promoting manufacturing growth in rural areas. To better understand the role played by such regulations, we study the effects of the Industrial Areas (IAs) program in India, which facilitated the establishment of industrial firms in areas that had previously been restricted to agriculture. We find that IAs caused a large increase in the number of firms and employment, and that there were substantial spillovers to neighboring villages. Furthermore, IAs trigger a classic "structural transformation" of the economy, with a shift of workers from agricultural to non-agricultural employment, and the creation of numerous small manufacturing and agricultural firms.

Many development programs are based on short-term interventions, either because of external funding constraints or because it is assumed that impacts persist post program termination ("sustainability"). Using a novel randomized phase-out research method, we provide experimental tests of the effects of program phase-out in the context of a large-scale agricultural input subsidy and extension program operated by the NGO BRAC to increase the use of improved seed varieties and basic farming practices among women smallholders in Uganda. We find that while supply of improved seeds through local, BRAC trained women declined, demand does not diminish, and farmers shift purchases from BRAC to market sources, indicating a persistent learning effect. We also find no evidence of declines in the practice of improved and less costly cultivation techniques taught by the program. These results have implications for both efficient program design and for models of technology adoption.

The imbalanced application of chemical fertilizers in India is widely blamed for low yields, poor soil health, pollution of water resources, and large public expenditures on subsidies, amounting to about 1 percent of India’s gross domestic product. To address the issue, the government of India is investing in a large-scale, expensive program of individualized soil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fertilizer mix. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in the Indian state of Bihar in what we believe to be the first evaluation of the effectiveness of the program as currently implemented. We did not find evidence of a statistically significant impact of customized fertilizer recommendations on fertilizer use. The lack of impact can be attributed to several factors, including a lack of understanding, lack of confidence in the information’s reliability, or other factors such as fertilizer costs that inhibit farmers from optimizing fertilizer application ratios even if the information shifts their underlying preferences. We provide evidence that suggests lack of confidence is the main factor inhibiting farmers’ response.