Theory is divided on whether falling transport costs lead to more or less spatial concentration of economic activity. Using US county-level data we find that aggregate employment became more concentrated between 1972-92. This aggregate picture hides important differences between sectors though....

Using US county data, we estimate employment growth equations to analyze how the spatial distribution of jobs has changed between 1972 and 2000. We find that total employment has become increasingly concentrated. This aggregate picture hides important sectoral differences though: whereas...

This Paper examines the spatial distribution of jobs across US counties and investigates whether sectoral employment is becoming more or less concentrated. The existing literature has found deconcentration (convergence) of employment across urban areas. Cities only cover a small part of the US...

We play a one-shot public good game in rural India between farmers connected to an exogenous star network.  Contributions by the centre of the star reach more players and have a larger impact on aggregate payoffs than contributions by the spoke players.  Yet, we find that the centre player...

We run a novel field experiment to link managers of African manufacturing firms.  The experiment features exogenous link formation, exogenous seeding of information and exogenous assignment to treatment and placebo.  We study the impact of the experiment on firm business practices outside of...

Expansion in mobile phone coverage has improved access to information throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa.  The existing evidence suggests that information technology has improved market efficiency and reduced consumer prices for certain commodities.  There...

We gave US$1,000 cash prizes to winners of a business ideas competition in Africa.  The competition, entitled 'Aspire' is intended to attract young individuals aspiring to become entrepreneurs.  Participants were ranked by panels of judges composed of established entrepreneurs.  Each panel...

We estimate the impacts of being connected to politicians on occupational choice.  We use an administrative dataset collected in 2008-2010 on 20 million individuals and rely on naming conventions to assess family links to candidates in elections held in 2007 and 2010.  We first estimate the...