204 CHAPTER 13


Even if information on this topic is limited, it would be more useful if it were more accessible. One way of improving access to research-based knowledge is to identify an institution that is considered to be sufficiently independent and neutral as the home of a website (a clearinghouse or digital library) where the available studies could be easily accessed (for example, in a database searchable by keywords, themes, and states).


Identify Contested Issues for Which Empirical Analysis Is Lacking


The establishment of a clearinghouse would help to identify gaps in existing research and promote work in those areas. For example, this study found sub- stantial research documenting that large farmers derive more direct benefits from the fertilizer and electricity subsidies than small farmers. However, studies that take indirect effects into account, or evaluate the effect of fertil- izer and electricity subsidies on food prices, are lacking. Likewise, not much research exists on the estimated consequences of a small rise in the farmgate price of urea. For electricity, little rigorous analysis has been conducted on the link between electricity pricing and groundwater use, even though this question is central to the debate on electricity supply to agriculture. So far, representative studies based on farm-household data that evaluate water-use efficiency under different electricity-pricing mechanisms (for example, by using stochastic production frontier functions) and that account for farmers’ crop choices (for example, by using linear programming methods) are either scarce or inaccessible. Considering that a substantial proportion of stakehold- ers (see Chapter 10) do not see a strong link between electricity pricing and groundwater use, more empirical research on the issue would be justified. Following up on earlier debates (Moench 1994), it would also be useful to conduct more empirical research on the impact of changes in electricity pric- ing, the price at which pump owners sell groundwater, and the equity impli- cations of such changes. Another area where more empirical research seems justified is transaction costs, especially because this issue is significant in the debate on metering. Because metered connections for agricultural pump sets already exist in some parts of India, empirical studies on the transaction costs involved are possible.3


Promote Experimentation and Learning


Linking rigorous research with policy experiments is a promising approach that has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The use of a random-


3 Some researchers believe that it is not possible to empirically measure transaction costs. How- ever, this is not the case (see, for example, Mburu et al. 2003).


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