This dissertation comprises three essays that study online demand coming from local offline markets. In the first essay, I study two social influence effects reflected in physical proximity and in demographic similarity, respectively, on online demand evolution. As these effects can be...

The study examines cattle keeping households’ preferences for phenotypic cattle traits in trypanosomosis prevalent production systems of Kenya and Ethiopia, using cross-sectional choice experiment survey data of 508 households. The data was collected between September 2004 and May 2005....

Covers conditions under which public-sector policies, programs, and projects succeed in enhancing the economic activities of poorer groups and micro-regions in developing countries. Topics include local economic development; small enterprises; various forms of collective action; labor and worker...

My thesis consists of three essays that investigate strategic interactions between individuals engaging in risky collective action in uncertain environments. The first essay analyzes a broad class of incomplete information coordination games with a wide range of applications in economics and...

Cooperative business firms are prevalent in agribusiness, yet no concise generalizedmodel exists to demonstrate how and why cooperative firms differ from, and may beselected over, the more common investor owned business firm. It is shown within ageneric transaction game that cooperatives fill...

The development and evolution of labor market structures and institutions. Particular focus on competing explanations of recent developments in the distribution of wage and salary income and in key institutions and organizational structures. Special attention to theories of worker motivation and...

This Thesis contains three essays on the economic behavior of individuals. The first essay, co-authored with Andreas Blume and Douglas DeJong is an experimental investigation into the contribution of cognition in a strategic setting where the goal is to coordinate by choosing different courses...

Drawing on the social embeddedness perspective, this paper examines the impact of entrepreneurs' social capital on their firm performance in post-Soviet Russia. Based on face-to-face interviews with 75 Russian entrepreneurs in 1995, and the follow-up study in 1999, the study contrasts the...

Development literature has recently promoted the use of producer organization in linking farmers to better-paying commodity markets. However, empirical studies find mixed performance of such organizations. This study examines the producer organization’s internal factors that may explain the...

Institutional problems and the corruptive use of social capital give ground for misuse ofinstitutional gaps and cause intentional failures for financial benefits. Based on socialcapital theory and transaction cost economics (TCE) this paper describes how theinstitutional environment in the...