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Sprayed to Death: Path Dependence, Lock-in and Pest Control Strategies
Abstract
Theoretical literature on the economics of technology has emphasised the effects on technological trajectories of positive feedbacks. In a competition among technologies that all perform a similar function, the presence of increasing returns to adoption can force all but one technology from the market. Furthermore, the victor need not be the superior technology. This paper provides an empirical study of one technological competition which illuminates this theoretical work. It uses theoretical results to explain why chemical control of agricultural pests remains the dominant technology in spite of many claims that it is inferior to its main competitor, integrated pest management.
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Citations
Cited by
Schreyögg, G., & Kliesch‐Eberl, M. (2007) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.613 · Cited by 1,036
Unruh, G. C. (2002) · Energy Policy · doi:10.1016/s0301-4215(01)00098-2 · Cited by 1,020
Designing agroecological transitions; A review
Duru, M., Therond, O., & Fares, M. (2015) · Agronomy for Sustainable Development · doi:10.1007/s13593-015-0318-x · Cited by 542
Unruh, G. C., & Carrillo-Hermosilla, J. (2006) · Energy Policy · doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2004.10.013 · Cited by 353
Technological regimes, path dependency and the environment
Berkhout, F. (2002) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/s0959-3780(01)00025-5 · Cited by 319
Metadata
- Authors
- Cowan, R., & Gunby, P.
- Venue
- The Economic Journal
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1996-05
- Volume
- 106
- Issue
- 436
- Pages
- 521
- ISSN
- 0013-0133 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2055858377
- Cited by
- 486
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 45.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Sprayed to Death: Path Dependence, Lock-in and Pest Control Strategies. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2235561
- The paper
- Cowan, R., & Gunby, P. (1996). Sprayed to Death: Path Dependence, Lock-in and Pest Control Strategies. The Economic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2307/2235561
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
