Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique

This paper presents evidence on how farmers’ decisions to adopt a new crop, sunflower,relate to the adoption choices of farmers in their social network of family and friends. Weshow that the relationship is shaped as an inverse-U, suggesting social effects are positivewhen there are few adopters in the network, and negative when there are many. We alsoprovide evidence that the adoption decisions of farmers who have better information aboutthe new crop are less sensitive to the adoption choices of others. Finally, we find thatadoption decisions are more highly correlated within the network of family and friendsthan within religion networks, and uncorrelated among individuals belonging to differentreligion networks.[...]