Download or read book Essays on Technology Adoption and Provision Efficiency in Development Projects written by Moon Young Parks and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many development projects, technologies with potential to improve welfare are under adopted and under-utilized once adopted. One possible cause for this inefficiency is ignoring fit risk (the risk the technology may not meet the needs of the potential adopter). This dissertation attempts to introduce fit risk in the development context and develops a framework to analyze resource misallocation when fit risk is not addressed by project donors and managers. We examine strategies to reduce fit risk, like pre-purchase demonstration to reduce waste and enhance intake. The dissertation analyzes when it is worth to incur costly demonstration of the technology that eliminates fit-risk, and shows that the economic net benefit of costly demonstration is non-monotone in the probability of technology fit. Demonstration is not worthy when the probability of non-suitability of the technology is either too high or too low. Even if well-implemented demonstration eliminates fit-risk and improves project value, it does not necessarily increase take-up of the technology. Ignoring fit-risk or misunderstanding demand in the presence of fit-risk can lead to miscalculating project values in development projects and to making wrong support decisions. The predictions of the model are tested using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in the case of vision aid technology (eyeglasses) in rural Cambodia. The analysis recognizes heterogeneity among individuals with respect to the benefit from glasses where eyesight is the proxy variable for different levels of likelihood of fit. Our empirical study shows that a one-week free trial (a type of demonstration) increased the take-up rate for the middle-fit group (mild vision impairment), while it decreased for the high-fit group (substantial vision impairment). While overall intake of the eyeglasses did not change much, people who purchased eyeglasses after the one-week free trial tended to use their eyeglasses more frequently than people who purchased the eyeglasses after only a single, ten-minute fitting process. This implies that such marketing efforts can lead to better allocation of technology and improve technology provision efficiency even if they do not necessarily increase take-up.