The Longer-term Impacts of Efficient Technology as a Solution to Environmental Externalities

Abstract:
Resource-conserving technologies provide the same level of services as status-quo technologies, but with fewer inputs. Examples include energy-efficient appliances, fuel-efficient vehicles
and cook-stoves, water-efficient appliances and fixtures, and input-efficient (precision) agriculture and forestry. These technologies are widely promoted as cost-effective and politically-acceptable ways to achieve economic development and environmental objectives.
Yet the arguments in favor of public programs to encourage the adoption of these resource-conserving technologies is based on incomplete models of human behavior. Proponents seem unaware that the impacts of adopting these technologies are theoretically ambiguous
and empirically unsupported. In a drought-prone area of Central America and in collaboration with community water suppliers, Ferraro and colleagues ran a large-scale, randomized controlled field experiment to test the environmental
and economic impacts of water-efficient technology adoption. He will present the results from this study, as well as
a summary of some of his work to measure the environmental and social impacts of environmental interventions, and the environmental impacts of poverty alleviation.