During the 2014 Indian general elections, we carried out a large-scale experiment randomizing a radio campaign highlighting the disadvantages of voting for corrupt vote-buying politicians. Official electoral data shows that the radio campaign significantly decreased the vote share of parties...

Privatization of a public good (the management of sewage treatment centers in Dakar, Senegal) leads to an increase in the productivity of downstream sewage dumping companies and a decrease in downstream prices of the services they provide to households. We use the universe of legal dumps of...

Social networks function as an important safety net in developing countries which often lack formal financial instruments. They are also an important source of information in developing countries with relatively low access to the internet and literacy rates. We review the empirical literature in...

Social networks function as an important safety net in developing countries, which often lack formal financial instruments. Such networks are also an important source of information in developing countries with relatively low access to the Internet and literacy rates. We review the empirical...

Rural areas of developing countries often lack effective legal enforcement. However, villagers who know each other well and interact repeatedly may use implicit contracts to minimize crime. I construct a dynamic limited-commitment model in which a thief cannot credibly commit to forego stealing...

Play in the traditional trust experiment depends both on trust beliefs and on levels of risk aversion. We ran two experiments with a diverse set of subjects in fifteen villages of rural Paraguay, the traditional trust experiment and a new experiment measuring only risk aversion. We find that...

Rabin (2000) argues that, under expected-utility, observed risk aversion over modest stakes implies extremely high risk aversion over large stakes. Cox & Sadiraj (2006) have replied that this is a problem of expected-utility of wealth, but that expected-utility of income does not share that...

The proliferation of mobile money across developing countries has led to an increase in availability of mobile payment systems. This decreases the organizational complexity of allowing more flexible payment terms for customers. We test whether subsidies, deposit requirements, and access to a...

Throughout much of the developing world, politicians rely on political brokers to buy votes prior to elections. We investigate how social networks help facilitate vote-buying exchanges by combining village network data of brokers and voters with broker reports of vote buying. We show that...

Standard models of hierarchy assume that agents and middle managers are better informed than principals about how to implement a particular task. We estimate the value of the informational advantage held by supervisors – middle managers – when ministerial leadership – the principal –...