Summary This paper examines how farmers in a developing country search for information. Using data on farmers' decisions to connect with other farmers in order to ask for information about different agricultural problems, we explore the role played by identity in accessing information. We show...

This paper explores the consequences of nonlinear wealth dynamics for the formation of bilateral credit arrangements to help manage idiosyncratic risk. Using original data on expected wealth dynamics, social networks and informal loans among southern Ethiopian pastoralist households, we find...

Climate change is widely expected to lead to changing rainfall variability and thus to changing frequency of drought. In places where drought is a major driver of agroecosystem dynamics, as in the extensive livestock grazing systems that dominate Africa's sprawling arid and semi-arid lands,...

Fieldwork for this paper was conducted under the Pastoral Risk Management (PARIMA) project of the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program (GL CRSP), funded by the Office of Agriculture and Food Security, Global Bureau, USAID, under grant number DAN-1328-G-00-0046-00, and analysis...

In this paper, we use an unusually rich data set from Ghana to explore the endogenous formation of information network linkages among farmers. We propose and test a new measure of social distance that accommodates possible asymmetries in social distance. Using this improved measure, we show that...