Government-sponsored education and training programs have the goal to enhance participants' skills so as to become more employable, productive and dependable citizens and thus alleviate poverty and decrease public dependence. While most of the literature evaluating training programs concentrates...

African immigrants in the United States (U.S.) experience immense challenges in the form of poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. Limited English language proficiency often restricts African immigrants to low-paying, unskilled positions. Ethnic entrepreneurship in the form of small-scale...

We study the effects of informal labor sharing arrangements and other social interactions on farmers' productivity in a developing country context, testing whether these types of social and work interactions lead to productivity gains through learning, synergy, or both. Using a rich panel data...

Rural households in developing countries adopt diversification of income sources as a common strategy to stabilize their income throughout the year. We view social networks as an important factor that influences diversification activities. Social interactions may help households to gain ideas,...

This study investigates whether peers are a contributing factor in childhood body-weight outcomes. Using an instrumental variables method on exogenously assigned peers, we find that the weight of peers within the same grade and school significantly impacts body mass index (BMI) z-score of an...

Social networks play an important role in generating learning externalities that can drive the diffusion of innovative, and potentially poverty-reducing, technologies. This is particularly the case in developing countries where rural education, extension, and agricultural information services...