Publications

Xu, Yingchen and Patrick S. Ward. (2023). Environmental Attitudes and Consumer Preferences for Environmentally-friendly Beverage Packaging: The Role of Information and Identity-labeling in Influencing Consumer Behavior. Frontiers in Agricultural Science and Engineering, 10(1), 95–108.

Working papers

In India, female farmers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers who lack land titles often face barriers to formal credit, while exposure to production risk further discourage borrowing and agricultural investment.. We assess the impact of expanding access to formal agricultural loans through “KhetScore”, a novel alternative data-based credit-scoring approach that utilizes remote sensing and machine learning to assess the expected productivity of a plot. We also examine whether bundling credit with insurance can generate ex-ante effects on agricultural investment by reducing farmers’ exposure to production and repayment risk and whether it can protect borrowers from repayment difficulties and over indebtedness following adverse shocks ex post. Using a cluster randomized trial in two states of India, we find that offering KhetScore loans significantly crowds-in formal borrowing among farmers who otherwise would not be eligible. KhetScore loans expand agricultural production primarily by increasing the scale of cultivation, leading to higher output, income, and profits. Effects are larger in the Rabi (winter) season, when land is often left fallow due to irrigation constraints, and in the state with lower baseline access to formal credit and agricultural production. We find limited evidence that insurance generated ex-ante effects on agricultural production decisions; favorable cultivation conditions resulted in few insurance payouts, preventing us from assessing protection against repayment difficulties ex post.


2. Xu, Yingchen, Matthew Neidell, Dawit Siraw, and Darby Jack "Heat and worker absence: Evidence from a sugarcane estate in Ethiopia"; Under review

Heat negatively affects labor supply and worker productivity, especially in physically demanding jobs that occur outdoors and in non-climate-controlled environments, yet evidence remains limited in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from three harvest seasons at a sugarcane estate in Ethiopia, we exploit plausibly exogenous day-to-day temperature variations to estimate the impact of high daily temperatures on worker absence on the following day. We find that a 1°C increase in daily temperature increases absences by approximately 3 percent. Allowing for nonlinear temperature effects reveals that absences only increase when daily average temperatures exceed 23°C or daily maximum temperatures exceed 30°C. Worker absences induced by days with average temperatures above 23°C correspond to 133,000 meters of forgone worker-equivalent output and 140,000 Ethiopian birr in worker earnings. Given the expected increases in extreme heat, these findings underscore the need for adaptation measures to protect workers and sustain agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa.


3. Xu, Yingchen, Gui Xian Ong, Han Ding, and Patrick S. Ward "Detour for better health: Air pollution and walking route choice"; Submitted

Air pollution is an important challenge for urban health and environmental quality in China, affecting not only health outcomes but also how residents navigate and experience city environments. Using a choice experiment in Suzhou, we examine residents’ preferences for air quality, natural surroundings, traffic conditions, and visibility along recreational walking routes and assess how they alter route choices to reduce exposure to air pollution. In addition to strong preferences for routes characterized by greater greenery, lower traffic levels, and higher visibility, we find that respondents are willing to take an 8.37-minute detour on a longer, low-pollution route to avoid a 10-unit increase in AQI. Because time has an opportunity cost, such detours impose a meaningful cost that is not captured by expenditures on conventional defensive goods such as masks and air purifiers and often overlooked when assessing the burden of air pollution. These findings highlight the importance of environmental quality in pedestrian route choice and provide evidence relevant to the planning and design of walking environments in cities facing air pollution challenges.


4. Xu, Yingchen, Patrick S. Ward, Anne Timu, Apurba Shee, Michael K. Ndegwa, and Liangzhi You "Risk-contingent credit in smallholder agriculture: Evidence from a multi-year experiment in Kenya"

Risk-Contingent Credit (RCC), a credit product that integrates an index-based insurance policy that repays the lender in the event of extreme weather, is designed to address both credit constraints and loan repayment risks faced by smallholder farmers. Using panel data from a three-round experiment in drought-prone Kenya, we examine how uptake of RCC and uninsured traditional credit (TC) evolves across repeated offers and estimate their round-specific effects on agricultural production. Both TC and RCC uptake declined sharply after the first round and remained low in subsequent rounds, likely due to several implementation challenges including delayed loan disbursement and flawed initial insurance index design. We find that both TC and RCC increased fertilizer use intensity, with RCC showing a larger effect, and the effect sizes grew over the years. Yet, these increases were concentrated among existing fertilizer users, with little evidence that repeated credit offers induced previously non-using farmers to adopt fertilizer. In addition, we find that the increases in fertilizer use intensity did not translate into higher yields or production value on average. Together, these findings highlight the importance of product design and implementation for sustaining participation and translating credit access into broader agricultural gains.


5. Ward, Patrick S., Berber Kramer, Subhransu Pattnaik, and Yingchen Xu "Impacts of an innovative credit + insurance bundle for marginalized farmers: Evidence from a cluster randomized trial in Odisha, India"

When offered KhetScore credit and insurance bundles, our findings suggest that farmers in Odisha, India, especially women, were more likely to borrow from formal sources and have insurance coverage. Despite increased borrowing, treated households faced less difficulty in repaying loans. Moreover, we find the treatment improved agricultural profitability by increasing revenues during the Kharif season and reducing costs in the Rabi season. Finally, we find the treatment to have significantly improved women’s empowerment and mental health.

Work in progress

1. There is an App for that: A randomized experiment on durables and digital financial tools to increase LPG use in Ghana (With Annelise Gill-Wiehl, B. Kelsey Jack, Darby Jack, et al.)