Title: Replication Data for: 'Rule-of-Thumb Instructions to Improve Fertilizer Management: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh'

Type Dataset Islam, Mahnaz, Beg, Sabrin (2022): Replication Data for: 'Rule-of-Thumb Instructions to Improve Fertilizer Management: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh'. Harvard Dataverse. Dataset. https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/3ROR22

Authors: Islam, Mahnaz (Amazon) ; Beg, Sabrin (University of Delaware) ; Cavanagh, Jack (J-PAL) ; Beg, Sabrin (University of Delaware) ;

Links

• Item record in Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Dataverse
• Digital object URL

Summary

This repository contains data used in "Rule-of-Thumb Instructions to Improve Fertilizer Management: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh," an RCT studying the effects of leaf color charts and basic rule-of-thumb instructions on fertilizer use in 105 villages in rural Bangladesh. Specifically, it contains data on from three rounds of surveys: a baseline that includes data at the farm-household and plot levels, a midline that includes time-use data and crop-timing data, and an endline with data symmetric to that collected in the baseline. The baseline data was collected from September-December 2012, the midline right after treatment delivery in 2013, and the endline from June to August 2013. This package also includes the survey instruments used to collect the data; for more information on the data please see the readme. The abstract of the associated paper is as follows: Heavy government subsidies have led to inefficient application and overuse of fertilizer in Bangladesh. This results in above-optimal costs to farmers as well as to the environment and the public. In a randomized controlled trial, we provide farmers with a simple tool (a leaf color chart) and basic, rule-of-thumb instructions to guide the timing and quantity of urea (nitrogen) application. Treatment farmers reduce urea use by 8% without compromising yield, suggesting significant scope for improving urea management. The results are mainly driven by farmers delaying urea application as returns to urea are low early on in the season and urea applied is likely to be wasted. Cost-effectiveness estimates suggest that each dollar spent on this intervention produces a return of US$2.8 due to reduction of urea use over three seasons, as well as significant environmental benefits. We also find suggestive evidence that optimizing the timing of urea application affects farmers’ yields, plausibly as the intervention allows farmers to reallocate urea application to times when returns to urea are highest.

More information

• DOI: 10.7910/DVN/3ROR22

Subjects

• Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences
• CESSDA: Agriculture and rural industry, Agriculture and rural industry

Dates

• Publication date: 2022
• Submitted: May 17, 2022
• Updated: June 02, 2022

Notes

Rights

• info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 CC0 1.0

Format

electronic resource