Standard models of investment predict that credit-constrained firms should grow rapidly when given additional capital, and that how this capital is provided should not affect decisions to invest in the business or consume the capital. The authors randomly gave cash and in-kind grants to male-...

Despite the emphasis placed by microfinance organizations on lending to female business owners, evidence from three recent randomized controlled trials has cast doubt on the ability of capital alone to grow female-operated microenterprises: in my own previous experiment in Sri Lanka women given...

We run a novel field experiment to link managers of African manufacturing firms. The experiment resembles the many forms of interaction that business and community organizations offer to their members. The design features exogenous link formation, exogenous seeding of information, and exogenous...

Patterns of correlation in innovation and contractual practices among manufacturing firms in Ethiopia and Sudan are documented. Network data that indicate whether any two firms in the utilized sample do business with each other, buy inputs from a common supplier, or sell output to a common...

Original Ugandan data collected by the authors are used to examine the determinants of funding to local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Success in attracting grants from international donors depends mostly on network effects. NGOs that raise in-kind resources locally tend to be young and...

This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML...

This paper uses high-resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250*250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40-year period. The analysis finds a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also...

This paper investigates whether social structure helps or hinders factor allocation using unusually rich data from The Gambia. Evidence indicates that land available for cultivation is allocated unequally across households; and that factor transfers are more common between neighbors, co-ethnics,...

This paper investigates whether the prospect of redistribution hinders the formation of efficiency-enhancing groups. An experiment is conducted in a Kenyan slum, Ugandan villages, and a UK university town and used to test, in an anonymous setting with no feedback, whether subjects join a group...

Internal migration plays an important role in moderating regional differences in well-being. This paper analyzes migrants' choice of destination, using Census and Living Standard Surveys data from Nepal. The paper examines how the choice of a migration destination is influenced by income...