Farmers in developing countries often lack access to timely and reliable information about modern technologies that are essential to improve agricultural productivity. The recent diffusion of mobile phones has the potential to overcome these barriers by making information available to those...

We present large-scale evidence on the effects of access to information on agricultural technology adoption and crop yields in India. We combine geo-referenced data on the construction of new mobile phone towers with data on the location and content of 2.5 million phone calls made by farmers to...

We study the effect of information on technology adoption and productivity in agriculture. Our empirical strategy exploits the expansion of the mobile phone network in previously uncovered areas of rural India coupled with the availability of call centers for agricultural advice. We measure...

Farmers in developing countries often lack access to timely and reliable information about modern technologies that are essential to improve agricultural productivity. The recent diffusion of mobile phones has the potential to overcome these barriers by making information available to those...

Most governments in developing countries offer subsidized credit programs to the agricultural sector. We document that farmers often lack information on how these programs work, their eligibility criteria and loan terms offered. We study the impact of information frictions on credit take-up by...

Markups vary systematically across firms and are an important cause of productivity dispersion. However, whether markup dispersion represents mis-allocation depends on sources driving the dispersion. This paper provides evidence on the role of demand-side factors in shaping the dispersion of...

We analyze the effects of a debt restructuring program that relaxed liquidity constraints — by reducing immediate payments without changing the long-run debt — for financially distressed small firms in South Africa’s minibus industry. We combine novel administrative data on business owners...