We study how job-seekers share information about jobs within their social network, and its implications for firms. We randomly increase the amount of competition for a job and find that job-seekers are less likely to share information about the job with their high ability peers. This lowers the...

Delegating the allocation of public resources to community members is an increasingly popular form of delivering development programs and are associated with a tradeoff between improved information about potential beneficiaries and favoritism towards local elites. Unlike targeting cash transfers...

We study how active labor market policies affect the exchange of information and support among jobseekers. Leveraging a unique social network survey in Ethiopia, we find that a randomized job-search assistance intervention reduces information sharing and support between treated jobseekers and...

Delegating the allocation of public resources to community members is an increasingly popular form of delivering development programs and are associated with a tradeoff between improved information about potential beneficiaries and favoritism towards local elites. Unlike targeting cash transfers...

We study how active labor market policies affect the exchange of information and support among jobseekers. Leveraging a unique social network survey in Ethiopia, we find that a randomized job-search assistance intervention reduces information sharing and support between treated jobseekers and...

The idea that local social capital yields economic benefits is fundamental to theories of agglomeration, and central to claims about the virtues of cities. However, this claim has not been evaluated using methods that permit more confident statements about causality. This paper examines what...

We examine how participation in a microfinance program diffuses through social networks. We collected detailed demographic and social network data in 43 villages in South India before microfinance was introduced in those villages and then tracked eventual participation. We exploit exogenous...

In three chapters I study the formation of social networks, and the impact the structures that arise may have in various economic settings. First, I develop a model of social network formation with heterogeneous agents and incomplete information. The model predicts an equilibrium in which agents...