In this Onam week, this piece over at the Watson Institute:
Fishermen, traders, and consumers have all benefited from the fishing industry’s adoption of mobile phones in Kerala, India, according to research published by Watson Visiting Professor Robert Jensen in this month’s Quarterly Journal of Economics. In one of the first rigorous, empirical studies of the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in poor countries, Jensen goes beyond the largely anecdotal body of evidence currently dominating the discussion of the so-called “digital divide” between the rich and poor.
“Economists have long emphasized that information is critical for the efficient functioning of markets,” Jensen writes in “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector.” And yet “questions such as how much market performance can be enhanced by improving access to information, how much society gains from such improvements, and how those gains are shared between producers and consumers remain largely unanswered.”
[H/t: Linta Varghese]