13 pages., Via online journal., Access to food is a basic pillar of human development. It is therefore unsurprising that it features so centrally on global development agendas and that a robust, interdisciplinary literature seeks to examine its determinants. This study focuses on the relationship between mobile technology and food access. Specifically, we ask whether mobile technology can strengthen the relationship between food access and certain social and political factors such as remittance flows and political participation. We use Afrobarometer surveys and highly disaggregated data on 2G network coverage to estimate a multilevel model testing how increased connectivity measured by mobile technology influences food access. We show that mobile phone use and higher frequency of use are significantly and positively correlated with food access, but we do not find evidence that remittances and political participation levels can explain the mechanisms linking mobile technology and food access. The study highlights that connectivity can play a powerful role in shaping food outcomes even when controlling for commonly identified impediments such as income constraints or physical isolation. These findings suggest that policies aimed at improving food access should devote attention to strengthening both communication and physical infrastructure.
8 pages., Via online journal, This paper examines the effect of farmers' access to communication technologies (CTs) on farmers' agricultural output at the aggregate level in the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) based on panel data. The paper uses a dynamic Cobb–Douglas aggregate production function and the generalized method of moments (GMM) as estimation techniques to estimate the parameters of interests. The research findings are: the estimated effects (measured by elasticity) of teledensity on the provincial level agricultural output have been positive and statistically significant both in the short and long runs. In the long-run, the size of the effect is substantial: from 0.94 to 1.06. This implies that the agriculture sector of the P. R. China has some potentials to derive benefit from the use of CTs like telephone. Hence, the Chinese government should consider policy support to expand communication infrastructure for the farmers
