CeDEx workshop - Daniel Zizzo (University of East Anglia)

Envy and agricultural innovation: An experimental case study from Ethiopia

This paper examines the impact of envy or related social preferences on agricultural innovations by combining experimental and household survey data. The experimental work is conducted in four rural villages of Ethiopia.  In the first stage of a money burning game, income inequality is induced by providing different endowments and enabling subjects to play a lottery.  In the second stage, people are allowed to decrease (‘burn’) other players’ money at their own expense. Empirical results indicate that  the level of agricultural adoption in these four communities is correlated with the level of envy captured through the experimental games. More socially conspicuous agricultural innovations may be more sensitive to fear of envy.