Soil degradation, a serious environmental problem in many developing countries, often necessitates the use of fertilizers to improve crop yields. However, smallholders usually do not have sufficient information about their soil nutrient levels to make profit‐maximizing decisions about fertilizer usage. We conducted two‐round experimental auctions to determine whether providing information and fertilizer recommendations from inexpensive soil testing kits to farmers in western Kenya affected their behavior and ability to optimize their input choices. We auctioned organic and inorganic agricultural inputs, dividing farmers into information treatments, and analyzed the data using double and triple difference estimations. We find that providing soil information has significant effects on farmers' willingness to pay for inputs. We then use Monte Carlo simulations to show that there is potential for high net benefits to farmers from individualized soil tests. These results suggest that soil testing can be a cost‐effective method to increase food security in the region.

Fuelwood scarcity creates a widespread environmental problem that places a major burden on women and children in the rural areas of developing countries. Consequently, many governments, donors and non-governmental organizations have encouraged on-farm fuelwood production and agroforestry practices. Whether, however, fuelwood from different sources can be easily substituted is an important empirical question as the degree of substitutability can depend on local markets and households' resource endowments and incomes. In this paper, we examine the substitution between three fuelwood sources among rural households in western Kenya: fuelwood collected off-farm, fuelwood produced on-farm, and that which is purchased. Using household-specific shadow prices for fuelwood and male and female wages, we find that strict gender divisions in household labor result in limited substitution between fuelwood sources. Among the implications are that programs and policies promoting agroforestry will have limited success without first addressing the structural differences in labor markets.

This paper shows the causal relationship between mutual religious association and the formation of social ties. We analyze dyadic relationships and show that joint attendance at a religious institution (RI) increases the probability of sharing information with and trusting a peer. We use a novel spatial instrumental variable strategy that combines insights from homestead inheritance institutions with triangular distances between peers and RI locations within villages in Kenya. We find that shared attendance at a RI increases the likelihood of receiving advice from a peer by 30 percentage points, demonstrating the strong impact of “weak ties” formed through social spaces.

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