Household-level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural Indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high-yielding seed varieties (HYVs) associated with the Green Revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers. The estimates indicate that imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption; this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased; own experience and neighbors' experience with HYVs significantly increased HYV profitability; and farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions.

The hypothesis that increases in the schooling of women enhance the human capital of the next generation and thus make a unique contribution to economic growth is assessed on the basis of data describing green revolution India. Estimates are obtained that indicate that a component of the significant and positive relationship between maternal literacy and child schooling in the Indian setting reflects the productivity effect of home teaching and that the existence of this effect, combined with the increase in returns to schooling for men, importantly underlies the expansion of female literary following the onset of the green revolution.