Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
通过随机对照试验，评估印度农民从商业服务Reuters Market Light接收的短信市场与天气信息带来的经济效益，发现对价格、作物价值等无显著平均影响。
This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML information with a number of deci-sions they have made, and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbi-trage and crop grading. But the magnitude of these effects is small. We find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers, crop value-added, crop losses resulting from rainstorms, or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices. Although disappointing, these results are in line with the market take-up rate of the RML service in the study districts, which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take-up over the study period.