Besides the work of Jensen (2007), there is little quantitative evidence on the impact that mobile telephony has had on household welfare. In considering the rural household welfare, the possibility is open of finding impacts of information that is accessed via mobile phone in several markets where rural households are usually inserted: agricultural product markets, agricultural services markets, agricultural byproducts; but also in labor markets that often supplement income diversification strategies of these households.
Using a database collected to measure the impact of mobile telephony in the welfare of rural households in Puno, Peru, this paper seeks to focus attention on the markets for agricultural products and by-products. The aim is to measure the contribution that has the use of mobile telephony in the profits resulting from the development of agricultural activities, using econometric techniques associated with quasi-experimental methods of impact assessment. How much does the mobile phone contribute to agricultural earnings? What is the differential impact of mobile phone use vis-a-vis scale variables such as farm size or the number of cattle, or diversification, as the total number of crops, or vertical integration, as the production of agricultural products, on the results of farming?
We expect to find different impacts depending on the type of use of mobile telephony, ie if used for information to affect the agricultural production function or is used to make marketing decisions. The results can help justify public policy efforts to include mobile telephone service as a basic service as well as the development of specific mobile livelihood services for farmers from the mobile communication technology, yet absent in Latin America.
Besides the work of Jensen (2007), there is little quantitative evidence on the impact that mobile telephony has had on household welfare. In considering the rural household welfare, the possibility is open of finding impacts of information that is accessed via mobile phone in several markets where rural households are usually inserted: agricultural product markets, agricultural services markets, agricultural byproducts; but also in labor markets that often supplement income diversification strategies of these households.
Using a database collected to measure the impact of mobile telephony in the welfare of rural households in Puno, Peru, this paper seeks to focus attention on the markets for agricultural products and by-products. The aim is to measure the contribution that has the use of mobile telephony in the profits resulting from the development of agricultural activities, using econometric techniques associated with quasi-experimental methods of impact assessment. How much does the mobile phone contribute to agricultural earnings? What is the differential impact of mobile phone use vis-a-vis scale variables such as farm size or the number of cattle, or diversification, as the total number of crops, or vertical integration, as the production of agricultural products, on the results of farming?
We expect to find different impacts depending on the type of use of mobile telephony, ie if used for information to affect the agricultural production function or is used to make marketing decisions. The results can help justify public policy efforts to include mobile telephone service as a basic service as well as the development of specific mobile livelihood services for farmers from the mobile communication technology, yet absent in Latin America.
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