Rural cooperative extension agent caseload thresholds and women's adoption of drought-tolerant maize in Ugandan sub-counties: a regression-discontinuity analysis of staffing-ratio compliance

Ugandan sub-counties are required to maintain a minimum ratio of cooperative extension agents to farming households, yet compliance varies and the causal effect of crossing the staffing threshold on women's adoption of drought-tolerant maize remains unestablished. The design treats the staffing ratio as a running variable, defines the cutoff at the mandated compliance level, and estimates a local average treatment effect for sub-counties near the threshold. The threshold constitutes a policy-relevant discontinuity because compliance is partially determined by administrative capacity rather than by women's adoption behaviour, and it derives the conditions under which the resulting estimate can be interpreted causally. It further specifies how women's adoption of drought-tolerant maize should be measured, how cooperative membership and extension contact mediate the relationship, and how sub-county heterogeneity in agro-ecology and market access conditions the expected effect. The contribution is a pre-specified, falsifiable research design that converts a staffing-ratio compliance rule into an identifiable causal parameter, together with a set of testable propositions about the mechanism linking agent caseload to women's adoption decisions. The design is offered as a template for evaluating extension staffing policies where compliance thresholds generate quasi-experimental variation.