As formalized by Montgomery (1991), referral by employees improves efficiency if the unobserved quality of a new worker is higher than that of unrefereed workers.  Using data compiled by army archives, we test whether the referral system in use in the British colonial army in Ghana served to...

A large literature describes how local risk sharing networks can help individuals smooth consumption in the face of idiosyncratic economic shocks.  However, when an entire community faces a large covariate shock, and when the transaction costs of transfers are high, these risk sharing networks...

Previous analyses of the formation and composition of community based organizations (CBOs) have used cross section data.  So, causal inference has been compromised.  We obviate this problem by using data from a quasi-experiment in which villages were formed by government officials selecting...

Using village data from Tanzania, we test whether gifts and loans between households are voluntary while correcting for mis-reporting by the giving and receiving households.  Two maintained assumptions underlie our analysis: answers to a question on who people would turn to for help are good...

Political accountability and participation are taken as key ingredients for development.  In this context voter education and informational campaigns are becoming popular with donors.  We followed a large-scale randomized campaign against electoral violence sponsored by an international NGO...

We document empirical patterns of correlation in the adoption of technological innovation and contractual practices among manufacturing firms in Ethiopia and Sudan.  The analysis is based on network data indicating whether any two firms in our sample do business with each other, whether they...

This paper examines migrations'  choice of destination conditional on migration.  To this end, we design an empirical strategy which remedies both migration selection and unobserved heterogeneity problems.  The study uses data from two rounds of Nepal Living Standard Surveys and a Population...

Combining data from the Moroccan census of manufacturing enterprises with information from a commune survey, we test whether firm expansion is affected by local financial development.  Our findings are consistent with this hypothesis: local bank availability is robustly associated with faster...

Using census data from Nepal, we examine how the marginal effects of male and female education on various household welfare indicators vary with education levels.  Parental education is associated with better household outcomes, but marginal effects vary with education level.  Higher child...

Personalized Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other forms of hardware needed to collect survey data electronically have become more affordable and powerful in recent years, leading to their use in a number of surveys in developing countries.  Simple use of these devices can offer the prospect of...