Using a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labor, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village-level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with...

A unique dataset of social and economic networks collected in 60 rural Gambian villages is used to study the ways in which households with links outside the village (that are considered as a proxy for market connections) behave in the locally available exchange networks for land, labor, input...

It is a truism that households in developing countries that face idiosyncratic income/expenditure shocks may face difficulties in smoothing consumption through formal credit institutions, and hence rely, at least partially, on informal ties. While this issue has been explored extensively in the...

Article on the use of system analysis methodology for modeling socio-economic processes. The author justifies the methodological approach, based on dynamic analysis of exogenous processes in economic and social management practices. Particular attention is paid to the use of index indicators...

One of the outstanding aims of most liberation movements has been to increase the economic well-being of their people, Guinea-Bissau being no exception in this respect. How far has the new Nation State succeeded in fulfilling this aim? A comparative analysis of the implementation of land...

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...

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...

Con el objetivo de estudiar la asociación entre las características y los recursos de una red social y los hábitos financieros de sus miembros, aplicamos una encuesta en una comunidad académica acotada en la Ciudad de México. En consonancia con la literatura de redes y desarrollo...

We study the relationship between information acquisition and trust in financial decision making. A field experiment with a variation of the trust game was conducted with the partners of a financial cooperative located in a Mexican rural area. Individuals who frequently visit friends are more...

This paper provides a theoretical framework of endogenous network formation that yields testable predictions for the network architectures generated by a particular informal institution common in village economies. We test the implications of the model on data from rural Ethiopia. In contrast to...