IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/rp2005-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Information in Technology Adoption under Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Jinhua Zhao

Abstract

An important channel through which globalization affects poverty is introducing new technologies to developing countries. Adoption of new technologies can be hindered by uncertainties about their efficiency. This paper studies the role of information exchange between adopters and others about a new technology and about each other's likelihood of adoption. We show that information about the technology can reduce adoption at the beginning of the diffusion process and increase adoption later. Information about each other increases adoption at the beginning and reduces adoption later on.

Suggested Citation

  • Jinhua Zhao, 2005. "The Role of Information in Technology Adoption under Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-41, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2005-41
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2005-41.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark W. Rosegrant & Robert E. Evenson, 1992. "Agricultural Productivity and Sources of Growth in South Asia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 74(3), pages 757-761.
    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. Songqing Jin & Jikun Huang & Ruifa Hu & Scott Rozelle, 2002. "The Creation and Spread of Technology and Total Factor Productivity in China's Agriculture," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(4), pages 916-930.
    4. Wolfgang Keller, 2004. "International Technology Diffusion," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 752-782, September.
    5. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    6. Jay Pil Choi, 1997. "Herd Behavior, the 'Penguin Effect,' and the Suppression of Informational Diffusion: An Analysis of Informational Externalities and Payoff Interdependency," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 407-425, Autumn.
    7. Besley, Timothy & Case, Anne, 1993. "Modeling Technology Adoption in Developing Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 396-402, May.
    8. Caplin, Andrew & Leahy, John, 1998. "Miracle on Sixth Avenue: Information Externalities and Search," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(446), pages 60-74, January.
    9. Chamley, Christophe & Gale, Douglas, 1994. "Information Revelation and Strategic Delay in a Model of Investment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(5), pages 1065-1085, September.
    10. Sunding, David & Zilberman, David, 2001. "The agricultural innovation process: Research and technology adoption in a changing agricultural sector," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 207-261, Elsevier.
    11. Zhao, Jinhua, 2003. "Information Externalities and Strategic Delay in Technology Adoption and Diffusion," Staff General Research Papers Archive 10578, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Allan Shampine, 1998. "Compensating for Information Externalities in Technology Diffusion Models," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 80(2), pages 337-346.
    13. Goolsbee, Austan & Klenow, Peter J, 2002. "Evidence on Learning and Network Externalities in the Diffusion of Home Computers," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 317-343, October.
    14. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    15. Berndt, Ernst R. & Pindyck, Robert S. & Azoulay, Pierre, 1970-, 1998. "Network effects and diffusion in pharmaceutical markets : antiulcer drugs," Working papers WP 4059-98., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    16. Jianbo Zhang, 1997. "Strategic Delay and the Onset of Investment Cascades," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(1), pages 188-205, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ngokkuen, Chuthaporn & Grote, Ulrike, 2012. "Geographical Indication for Jasmine Rice: Applying a Logit Model to Predict Adoption Behavior of Thai Farm Households," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 51(2), pages 1-29, May.
    2. Nur Shuhamin Nazuri & Norsida Man, 2016. "Acceptance and Practices on New Paddy Seed Variety Among Farmers in MADA Granary Area," Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Richtmann Publishing Ltd, vol. 5, July.
    3. Machiko Nissanke & Erik Thorbecke, 2006. "A Quest for Pro-Poor Globalization," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-46, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    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. Fang, Di & Richards, Timothy, 2016. "New Maize Variety Adoption in Mozambique: A Spatial Approach," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235388, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. 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.
    3. Mira Frick & Yuhta Ishii, 2015. "Innovation Adoption by Forward-Looking Social Learners," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1877, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    4. Wagner, Peter A. & Klein, Nicolas, 2022. "Strategic investment and learning with private information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    5. Rose Cunningham, 2004. "Investment, Private Information and Social Learning: A Case Study of the Semiconductor Industry," Macroeconomics 0409021, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Heidhues, Paul & Melissas, Nicolas, 2012. "Rational exuberance," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1220-1240.
    7. Paul Heidhues & Nicolas Melissas, 2010. "Technology adoption, social learning, and economic policy," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-10-007, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    8. Yoon, Young-Ro, 2009. "Endogenous timing of actions under conflict between two types of second mover advantage," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 728-738, November.
    9. Marc Santugini, 2020. "On the consumer problem under an informational externality," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(1), pages 149-161, April.
    10. Di Fang & Timothy J. Richards, 2018. "New Maize Variety Adoption in Mozambique: A Spatial Approach," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 66(3), pages 469-488, September.
    11. Tao Wang, 2011. "Dynamic Equilibrium Bunching," Working Paper 1291, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    12. Xue, J., 2006. "Collective Behavior with Endogenous Thresholds," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0613, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Branko Boskovic, David P.Byrne, Arvind Magesan, 2012. "Herding Among Bureaucrats," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1158, The University of Melbourne.
    14. Louise Allsopp, 2004. "An Experiment to Investigate the Externalities of Search," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(251), pages 423-435, December.
    15. Cary Frydman & Ian Krajbich, 2022. "Using Response Times to Infer Others’ Private Information: An Application to Information Cascades," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2970-2986, April.
    16. Daron Acemoglu & Munther A. Dahleh & Ilan Lobel & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2011. "Bayesian Learning in Social Networks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(4), pages 1201-1236.
    17. Caplin, Andrew & Leahy, John, 2000. "Mass layoffs and unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 121-142, August.
    18. Young-Ro Yoon, 2019. "Strategic Information Disclosure to be imitated under Informational and Payoff Externality," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 39(1), pages 419-430.
    19. Jianbo Zhang & Zhentang Zhang, 1999. "Asymptotic Efficiency in Stackelberg Markets with Incomplete Information," CIG Working Papers FS IV 99-07, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG).
    20. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum & Edouard Schaal & Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel, 2017. "Uncertainty Traps," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1641-1692.

    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:unu:wpaper:rp2005-41. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.