Information networks among women and men and the demand for an agricultural technology in India:

Although there is ample evidence of differences in how and where men and women acquire information, most research on learning and household decisionmaking only considers access to information for a single, typically male, household head. This assumption may be problematic in developing-country agriculture, where women play a fundamental role in farming. Using gender-disaggregated social network data from Uttar Pradesh, India, we analyze agricultural information networks among men and women. We test for gender-specific network effects on demand for laser land leveling—a resource-conserving technology—using data from a field experiment that combines a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction with a lottery.