Research Seminars @ Illinois

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Tailored for undergraduate researchers, this calendar is a curated list of research seminars at the University of Illinois. Explore the diverse world of research and expand your knowledge through engaging sessions designed to inspire and enlighten.

To have your events added or removed from this calendar, please contact OUR at ugresearch@illinois.edu

Speaker Jess Rudder - Learning from Weather Forecasts and Short-Run Adaptation: Evidence from an At-Scale Experiment

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
ACE (Dept. Agricultural and Consumer Economics)
Location
426 Mumford Hall
Virtual
wifi event
Date
Nov 15, 2024   12:00 - 1:00 pm  
Speaker
Jess Rudder, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Chicago, Becker Friedman
Views
31
Originating Calendar
ACE Seminars

Abstract 
Weather forecasts are an example of a public good that is often distributed at-scale without charging users. This feature can make measuring the benefits of weather forecast distribution challenging because information spillovers are likely; people like to talk about the weather and weather information is often available from a variety of sources. Despite the ubiquity of weather information, small-scale farmers often lack access to high-quality weather forecasts that are tailored to help them make production decisions. We implement a randomized experiment with 400,000 cotton growers in Pakistan and vary the share of farmers treated with large clusters (tehsils). We show that treated and untreated farmers in high-saturation clusters update their farming behavior in line with forecasts. Directly treated farmers in high saturation tehsils are 37-67\% more likely to avoid rain when irrigating and applying fertilizer and pesticides. Control farmers in highly saturated tehsils are 22-46\% more likely to avoid rain compared to controls in low-saturation tehsils. For heat avoidance, results follow a similar pattern but are statistically weaker. Direct information sharing is a plausible pathway - control farmers in high saturation areas were 8\% more likely than control farmers in low saturation areas to report discussing weather information with peers. At the end of the season, estimates for yields are positive but imprecise and there is evidence that input expenditure increased.

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