Improving agricultural output and food security is a major concern in sub-Saharan Africa, but many efforts to help farmers improve yields have failed. Recent research has shown that agriculture inputs are often of very low quality, which may explain suboptimal yields and low adoption of inputs....

There is growing evidence that ethnic divisions and conflict experience affect social capital and economic interactions, in both positive and negative ways. However, recent work has suggested that the experience of electoral violence in Kenya does not correlate with laboratory behavior between...

For most of the developing world, microenterprises are a key source of income and employment creation. For many countries the informal sector, where most of the small enterprises exist, represents over 80% of employment (ILO 2012). These businesses often have a difficult time growing. There are...

We use a set of experiments to study the effects of forced military service for a rebel group on social capital. We examine the case of Northern Uganda, where recruits did not self-select nor were systematically screened by rebels. We find that individual cooperativeness robustly increases with...

Classic economic theory predicts that markets will clear, leaving little or no gains from trade left on the table. Laboratory experiments have largely confirmed this, though the results of recent field experiments have been mixed, with some artefactual markets in developing countries performing...

Research and development (R&D) is a common process in for-profit organizations. Despite the benefits, it is not routinely practiced in nonprofit organizations, in part because it is difficult to identify the effects of programs that are designed to involve individuals over long periods of time....

Mikrounternehmen sind für einen Großteil der armen Weltbevölkerung Haupteinkommens- und Beschäftigungsquelle. Die Entwicklung geeigneter Förderprogramme für Mikrounternehmen stellt weiterhin eine große Herausforderung dar. Während Finanzspritzen oft bei der Unternehmensgründung helfen,...

The stability of many post-conflict societies rests on the successful reintegration of former soldiers. We examine social capital of former soldiers in Northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army forcibly recruited tens of thousands of youth during a recent brutal conflict. We use a set of...

In 2008, Uganda granted hundreds of small groups $400/person to help members start individual skilled trades. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised earnings by 38% (Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). We return after 9 years to find these start-up grants raised earnings and...

Corruption and mismanagement of public resources can affect the quality of government services and undermine growth. Can citizens in poor communities be empowered to demand better-quality public investments? We look at whether providing social accountability training and information on project...