Understanding the Effects of Technology Adoption Decisions Made by Smallholder Farmers with Incomplete Information

  This dissertation has two essays that are focused on understanding the effects of technology adoption decisions made by smallholder farmers who have incomplete information. The first essay employed a clustered randomized control trial (RCT) with factorial design in upper Eastern Kenya to estimate the impact of three different interventions at improving credence attributes of smallholder farmers’ maize. This essay also utilized a Becker DeGroot Marschak auction method to determine if farmers were willing to adopt a credence technology, and if yes, if their willingness to pay varied based on having previous experience with this agricultural technology. The second essay used the 2018/19 Ethiopia Socio-economic Survey to analyze the impacts of three sources of measurement error caused by farmers’ misperceptions on maize yields. Moreover, this essay explored how farmers’ incomplete information about adoption of one agricultural input led to misallocation of other complementary inputs.