Using a multinomial endogenous switching regression model, this study examined the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to adopt multiple integrated technologies and then estimated the effects of adopting integrated farm technologies on farm yield, farm income, and household food expenditure. The results showed that adopting higher-order suites of technologies provides higher dividends to farmers in terms of farm yield and income relative to a single technology adoption.

It is well established in the empirical literature that people care about relative status or positionality. Hence, any policy that makes someone better off imposes a negative externality on their peers. However, the effectiveness of public policy aimed at mitigating positional externality hinges on the drivers of relative concerns, which are individual and context-specific, requiring empirical analysis.

Key Messages

• Artisanal and small-scale gold miners in remote areas of Colombia are willing to try formalization (obtaining a legal title to extract gold). However, they perceive costs can hinder the adoption of this formalization
• Bundles of preferences about benefits and costs of formalization are not uniform across commodities and depend upon previous experience with formalization and the strength of social capital formation.
• Gender seems to play an effect on preferences, but this impact is not consistent across the communities studied

Abstract

Introduction
Public perception of the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to six other major public health problems (alcoholism and drug use, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, lung cancer and respiratory diseases caused by air pollution and smoking, and water-borne diseases like diarrhea) is unclear. We designed a survey to examine this issue using YouGov’s internet panels in seven middle-income countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in early 2022.