Agricultural Technology and the Distribution of Welfare Gains

Abstract

ITTLE is known about how technology is generated in agriculture and how technological improvements affect different sectors of society both within and outside of agriculture. This becomes apparent after one reads two excellent survey papers by Nadiri [ 15 ] and Kennedy and Thirlwall [13] on technological change. Ir appears that relatively little theoretical and empirical work has been done on the welfare or income distributional effects of technological change. This is unfortunate, for a considerable amount of research funds are spent each year by both private and public institutions to develop new technologies for agriculture.The purpose of this paper is to discuss the welfare implications of different types of technological advances in agriculture. The welfare gains and losses are "technologically speci¡ Also, the distribution of welfare gains from technological change depends critically on the industrial structure of the farm ¡ and the input suppliers to these ¡ at University of Iowa Libraries/Serials Acquisitions on June 23, 2015 http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 4 This body of literature has recently been surveyed by

Social Rates of Return and Other Aspects of Agricultural Research: The Case of Cotton Research in São Paulo, Brazil: Comment

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Risk and Reciprocity Over the Mobile Phone Network: Evidence from Rwanda

“…If, for instance, wealthy individuals substitute out of informal risk sharing arrangements and into predominantly phone-based arrangements, it is possible that poorer people will be left with fewer opportunities for risk sharing. In this way, mobile phones could end up having a regressive effect, as has been demonstrated with other technologies in similar contexts (Bieri et al 1972). If such regressive effects exist, it would suggest that blanket investment in telecommunications infrastructure may not have the transformative economic impacts envisioned by the popular media.…”

Perspectives on Assessing the Impacts of Improved Agricultural Technologies in Developing Countries

“…(Clausen 1983, p. 13). 99 been content to partition gains between consumers, tenant farmers, landlords and landless labourers (see, for example, Scobie 1976;Scobie and Posada 1976;Hayami and Herdt 1977; for a more comprehensive approach, see Lipton 1978). Today, the situation remains largely unchanged from that observed by Bieri, de Janvry and Schmitz (1972) in that there has been little empirical use made of distributional weights in such economic assessment though there has been increasing emphasis on such issues in ex ante appraisal of commodity research portfolios (see, for example, Pinstrup-Andersen, de Londoiio and Hoover 1976).…”