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Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique

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Author Info
Oriana Bandiera
Imran Rasul

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Abstract

Despite their potentially strong impact on poverty, agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly. Using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in Mozambique, we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks. Since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others, we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters. Dynamic considerations, however, suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption and to free-ride on the information gathered by others. We present empirical evidence which shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse-U. In line with information sharing, the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others. The data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context. In particular social networks are precisely identified, and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group information.

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Paper provided by Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE in its series STICERD - Development Economics Papers with number 35.

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Date of creation: Jun 2002
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Handle: RePEc:cep:stidep:35

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Keywords: Social networks technology adoption information sharing.

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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Christopher Udry, 2003. "Fieldwork, Economic Theory, and Research on Institutions in Developing Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 107-111, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Koellinger, Ph.D & Schade, C., 2008. "Acceleration of Technology Adoption within Firms: Empirical Evidence from the Diffusion of E-business Technologies," Research Paper ERS-2008-013-ORG Revision, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus Uni. [Downloadable!]
  3. Pramila Krishnan & Emanuela Sciubba, 2006. "Links and Architecture in Village Networks," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 0614, Birkbeck, School of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics. [Downloadable!]
  4. Raquel Fernandez, 2007. "Culture as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labor Force Participation over a Century," NBER Working Papers 13373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Timothy G. Conley & Christopher R. Udry, 2005. "Learning about a new technology: pineapple in Ghana," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Giorgio Topa & Stephen Ross & Patrick Bayer, 2005. "Place of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes," Working Papers 05-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Adaman, Fikret & Ardic, Oya Pinar & Tuzemen, Didem, 2006. "Network Effects in Risk Sharing and Credit Market Access: Evidence from Istanbul," MPRA Paper 4078, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 Dec 2006. [Downloadable!]
  8. Katleen Van den Broeck & Stefan Dercon, 2007. "Social Interactions in Growing Bananas: Evidence from a Tanzanian Village," Discussion Papers 07-08, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Fernández, Raquel, 2007. "Culture as Learning: The Evolution of Female Labour Force Participation Over a Century," CEPR Discussion Papers 6451, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Marcel Fafchamps & Flore Gubert, 2005. "The Formation of Risk Sharing Networks," Working Papers DT/2005/13, DIAL (Développement, Institutions & Analyses de Long terme). [Downloadable!]
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  12. Timothy Conley & Fredrick Flyer & Grace Tsiang, 2003. "Spillovers from Local Market Human Capital and the Spatial Distribution of Productivity in Malaysia," Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1229-1229. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel, 2006. "The Illusion of Sustainability," Center for International and Development Economics Research, Working Paper Series 1059, Center for International and Development Economics Research, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley. [Downloadable!]
  14. Bruce A. Weinberg, 2007. "Social Interactions with Endogenous Associations," NBER Working Papers 13038, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Gine, Xavier & Klonner, Stefan, 2005. "Credit constraints as a barrier to technology adoption by the poor : lessons from South Indian small-scale fishery," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3665, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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