This chapter surveys research on social capital. We explore the concepts that motivate the social capital literature, efforts to formally model social capital using economic theory, the econometrics of social capital, and empirical studies of the role of social capital in various socioeconomic...

Using data on agricultural traders in Madagascar, this paper shows that social network capital has a large effect on firm productivity. Better connected traders have significantly larger sales and value added than less connected traders after controlling for physical and human inputs as well as...

SMS information campaigns are increasingly used for policy. To investigate their effectiveness, we conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to study information sharing through mobile phone messages. Subjects are rural households in Mozambique who have access to mobile money. In the base treatment,...

SMS information campaigns are increasingly used for policy. To investigate their effectiveness, we conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to study information sharing through mobile phone messages. Subjects are rural households in Mozambique who have access to mobile money. In the base treatment,...

We conduct a randomized controlled trial in 180 villages in Uttar Pradesh, India, to promote the adoption of a saving commitment product new to our study population. A random set of participants are targeted by our promotional campaign. We test whether the diffusion of the product among...