Rie Muraoka* (National
Graduate Institute for Policy Studies: GRIPS)
Tomoya Matsumoto (GRIPS)
Songqing Jin (Michigan State University)
Keijiro Otsuka (GRIPS)
Abstract
This study assesses the determinants, productivity and profitability of an integrated maize farming system, which involves application of improved seeds, use of chemical fertilizers and manure, and intercropping with legumes. We estimate not only the effect of each practice on productivity and farm income but also the effect of the integrated system as a whole by using an intensification index of the farming system. Our results show that population pressure induced the adoption and intensification of the farming system. We also found a significant positive effect of the integrated farming system on land productivity and household income without sacrificing non-farm income.
Kei Kajisa* (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Abstract
A kind of group-level volumetric water pricing system, as replacement for area-based pricing, was introduced to a half of randomly selected water user groups in a gravity irrigation scheme in Bohol, the Philippines. We observed institutional changes in the treatment group toward stricter water managements and water allocation rules, although resulting water savings were not significantly different from the control group. The results of artefactual field experiment (the public goods game with a costly checking and punishment) are consistent with this observation, implying the emergence of a tight society under the new economic incentive. Equalization in rice profit among the members in each treated group indicates that the volumetric pricing, a strong signal for efficiency, can also improve equality under a certain setting.
Takashi Kurosaki* (Hitotsubashi University)
Abstract
To enhance households’ capacity to avoid attacks on farms by wild boars, we implemented a randomized intervention to teach indigenous techniques of scaring and trapping and modern ones of drugs to induce infertility to subsistence-oriented women farmers in Pakistan. The intervention was conducted between the first and second years of the panel survey. The analysis of a four-year panel data shows that the intervention was highly effective in eliminating the crop-income loss immediately after the intervention, but effects disappeared later, suggesting the difficulty in technology transfer through the training or the high implicit cost in implementing the treatment (Journal of Development Effectiveness, forthcoming). In the fifth round of the panel survey, we collected detailed information on the learning and dislearning process of households regarding the techniques taught in the intervention. In this paper, we first extend the impact analysis using the five-year panel data and then examine the correlates associated with differences in the learning and dislearning process. The majority of farmers discontinued the use of techniques learned four years ago. Less educated farmers with smaller farm size were more likely to abandon the techniques if they were treated and less likely to learn from the treated neighbours if they were not treated.
Neighborhood Effects in Pesticide Use: Evidence from the Rural Philippines
Takeshi Aida* (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)
Abstract
This study investigates how pesticide use in neighboring farm plots affects one’s own use. Although it is taken for granted that there are spatial externalities in pesticide use, very few empirical economic studies directly analyze this issue. Applying spatial panel econometric model to the plot level panel data in Bohol, the Philippines, this study shows that the pesticide use, especially for herbicide, is spatially correlated though there is no statistically significant spatial correlation in unobserved shocks. This implies that farmers apply pesticides inappropriately by mimicking neighboring farmers’ behavior, rather than rationally responding to the intensity of infestation.
Nobuhiko Fuwa* (Waseda University)
Kei Kajisa (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Eduardo Lucio (University
of Queensland)
Sharon Faye Piza (Independent)
Yasuyuki
Sawada (University of Tokyo)
Abstract
This paper focuses on a recent example of institutional innovation in informal finance in the Philippines: the emerging credit arrangement called ‘ATM sangla (pawning).’ We report on the analysis of a small survey of 320 factory workers in an industrial estate near the Metro Manila area. ATM sangla is informal loan arrangement where the borrower’s ATM card is used as the collateral and where the lender uses the ATM card (or debit card) to withhold the repayment (principal and interest) from salary payment on every pay day until the entire amount is repaid. Slightly less than half of our respondents (42%) actually utilized ATM sangla at least once, and the average amount of the loan (principal) is 15,000 pesos, which correspond to 1.3 times the average monthly salary. We find that roughly one third of our respondents are hyperbolic discounters, who tend to hold higher loan balances with ATM sangla transactions than the time-consistent discounters. We find evidence that those hyperbolic discounters are naïve, rather than sophisticated, suggesting that the emergence of ATM sangla may have encouraged them to overborrow.
Free-riding and Community Norms in the Tragedy of the Commons
Jun Goto* (Hitotsubashi University)
Takahiro Matsui (Mie University)
Abstract
In the exploitation of common pool resources (CPRs), rational individuals tend to be engaged in free-riding or overuse. This paper investigates how social norms that contribute to overcome this “tragedy” are established in Japanese fishing communities by combining artefactual field experiments with field data. Our estimation results confirm three findings. First, fishermen who exhibit more cooperative, less impatient, and more risk averse behavior in the laboratory are less likely to deviate from the norm to mitigate overuse of CPRs. Second, social esteem considerations based on a comparison of members’ performances may provide an exit option for the higher and the lower ability agents. Third, the scarcity of resources in a community seems to induce more pro-social norms. We confirm that these econometric results are robust to omitted variable biases by applying the coefficient stability approach proposed by Oster (2015).
Religious Fractionalization and Crimes in Disaster-Affected Communities
Masahiro Shoji* (Seijo University)
Abstract
This study uncovers the impact of religious fractionalization on post-disaster crime. By using a unique survey data collected in Bangladesh, it shows that following a natural disaster, individuals in fractionalized communities are more likely to be victims of crime than those in non-fractionalized communities. This is robust to the use of alternative dataset at the district level. Furthermore, the effect of religious fractionalization on the crime victimization is larger for poor households. This study also exhibits empirical support for the idea that this is caused by the misallocation of disaster reliefs in the fractionalized communities. However, the high economic inequality or inefficient risk sharing is not significantly related with the post-disaster crime.