IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2000-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations in Ethiopia: the role of Education

Author

Listed:
  • Sharada Weir
  • John Knight

Abstract

Schooling has been shown to provide substantial externality benefits by increasing farm output and shifting the production frontier outwards. This paper investigates the role of schooling at the household- and site-levels in the adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations in rural Ethiopia. We find that household-level education is important to the timing of adoption but less crucial to the question of whether a household has ever adopted fertiliser, i.e., early innovators tend to be educated and to be copied by those who adopt later, obscuring the relationship between education and adoption at the household-level. By contrast, site-level education appears not to affect the timing of an innovation’s introduction to the site, but does influence the extent of diffusion. Thus, there are two externality effects: educated farmers are early innovators, providing an example which may be copied by lesseducated farmers; and educated farmers are better able to copy those who innovate first, enhancing diffusion of the new technology more widely within the site.

Suggested Citation

  • Sharada Weir & John Knight, 2000. "Adoption and diffusion of agricultural innovations in Ethiopia: the role of Education," CSAE Working Paper Series 2000-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2000-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5927e528-77e6-48ba-90c2-665845e7bbf7
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Foster, Andrew D & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1995. "Learning by Doing and Learning from Others: Human Capital and Technical Change in Agriculture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1176-1209, December.
    3. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1993. "Modeling Technology Adoption in Developing Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 396-402, May.
    4. Foster, Andrew D & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1996. "Technical Change and Human-Capital Returns and Investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 931-953, September.
    5. Sharada Weir & John Knight, 2000. "Education externalities in rural Ethiopia: evidence from average and stochastic frontier production functions," CSAE Working Paper Series 2000-04, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    6. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    7. Basu, Kaushik & Foster, James E, 1998. "On Measuring Literacy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1733-1749, November.
    8. Ellison, Glenn & Fudenberg, Drew, 1993. "Rules of Thumb for Social Learning," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 612-643, August.
    9. John Knight & Sharada Weir & Tassew Woldehanna, 2003. "The role of education in facilitating risk-taking and innovation in agriculture," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(6), pages 1-22.
    10. Jamison, Dean T. & Moock, Peter R., 1984. "Farmer education and farm efficiency in Nepal: The role of schooling, extension services, and cognitive skills," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 67-86, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yamauchi, Futoshi, 2007. "Social learning, neighborhood effects, and investment in human capital: Evidence from Green-Revolution India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 37-62, May.
    2. Weir, Sharada & Knight, John, 2004. "Externality Effects of Education: Dynamics of the Adoption and Diffusion of an Innovation in Rural Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 93-113, October.
    3. Oriana Bandiera & Imran Rasul, 2006. "Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(514), pages 869-902, October.
    4. Tassew, Woldehanna, 2005. "The Role Schooling in the Choice of Activities and Alleviation of Poverty in Rural Ethiopia," Ethiopian Journal of Economics, Ethiopian Economics Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-98, May.
    5. B Kelsey Jack, "undated". "Market Inefficiencies and the Adoption of Agricultural Technologies in Developing Countries," CID Working Papers 50, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    6. Sébastien MARCHAND & Huanxiu GUO, 2013. "Is participatory social learning a performance driver for Chinese smallholder farmers?," Working Papers 201318, CERDI.
    7. Funes, Jose E., 2018. "The role of social interaction in the adoption and geographic diffusion of an agricultural technology: The case of high-iron bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) in Rwanda," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 273872, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. Simon Appleton & Arsene Balihuta, 1996. "Education and agricultural productivity: Evidence from Uganda," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 415-444.
    9. Yohane Khamfula, 1998. "Influence of social learning on exchange rate policy in developing countries:a preliminary finding," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(5), pages 697-704.
    10. Jones, Patricia, 2001. "Are educated workers really more productive?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 57-79, February.
    11. Alejandro Ramirez & Gustav Ranis, 1997. "Economic Growth and Human Development," Working Papers 787, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    12. Oleg Badunenko & Daniel Henderson & Romain Houssa, 2014. "Significant drivers of growth in Africa," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 339-354, December.
    13. Timothy G. Conley & Christopher R. Udry, 2010. "Learning about a New Technology: Pineapple in Ghana," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 35-69, March.
    14. Mark Rosenzweig & Andrew D. Foster, 1996. "Household Division, Inequality and Rural Economic Growth," Home Pages _074, University of Pennsylvania.
    15. Kondylis, Florence & Mueller, Valerie, 2012. "Seeing is Believing? Evidence from a Demonstration Plot Experiment in Mozambique:," MSSP working papers 1, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    16. Debasis Bandyopadhyay & Xueli Tang, 2011. "Parental nurturing and adverse effects of redistribution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 71-98, March.
    17. Ponticelli, Jacopo & Bustos, Paula & Castro-Vincenzi, Juan & Monras, Joan, 2018. "Industrialization without Innovation," CEPR Discussion Papers 13379, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • Q16 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - R&D; Agricultural Technology; Biofuels; Agricultural Extension Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2000-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.