Risk, Schooling and the Choice of Seed Technology in Developing Countries: A Meta-Profit Function Approach
研究印尼稻农在风险、不确定性和教育影响下如何选择高产与传统稻种，发现盈利性、洪水概率、灌溉质量和信贷可得性促进高产稻种采纳，而干旱和土地财富则起抑制作用。
The determinants of rice seed variety choice are studied in a framework in which cultivator's variety specific profit, risk preferences, uncertainty and schooling affect variety choice. The econometric model takes the form of a simultaneous equation switching regimes model with random profit functions (the meta-profit function). Adoption of high yielding varieties in Indonesia is found to be positively associated with profitability, likelihood of flooding, quality of irrigation conditional on relative profit, and availability of credit, and negatively associated with likelihood of drought and land wealth. Schooling significantly affects variety specific profit and input demand but not variety choice. The spread of high yielding rice varieties (HYV's) has ushered in an era of agricultural transformation in Asia. In Indonesia, the adoption of these new seed varieties contributed importantly to a spectacular increase in Indonesia's rice production over the last decades-rice output grew at an annual rate of 4 percent during the 1970's and almost 6 percent in the 1980's. While experimental plots have demonstrated that under optimal conditions the mean yield of HYV rice far exceeds that of traditional varieties (TV's), many Asian cultivators do not plant HYV's. In Indonesia, the HYV revolution has been particularly slow to spread to many areas outside of Java and partly as a consequence the distribution of the gains derived from HYV's has been uneven. Accounting for differences in adoption rates is therefore of some interest. Differences in prices and fixed factors of production are one explanation for inter-farm differences in seed variety adoption. If cultivator's seed technology choices are the result of profit maximizing behavior, then varietal choice will depend on the determinants of profit: variable factor prices, the prices of (varietyspecific) output, and the level of fixed factors including the agro-climatic environment. Different profit functions exist for each variety, reflecting the differences in their biological technology. If seed variety choice is itself part of the cultivators profit-maximization problem, then there exists a single profit function-the metaprofit function-which treats variety choice as a variable input and from which all