The authors explore the impact of access to information on poor farmers’ consumption. The analysis combines spatially coded data on mobile phone coverage with household panel data on farmers from some of the poorest areas of the Philippines. Both the ordinary least squares and instrumental...

The authors explore the impact of access to information on poor farmers' consumption. The analysis combines spatially coded data on mobile phone coverage with household panel data on farmers from some of the poorest areas of the Philippines. Both the ordinary least squares and instrumental...

The authors explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2,100 households in 135 rural communities of the Philippines, the paper shows that where transaction costs are reduced (proxied by road construction), there is an increase in generalized...

This paper explores the social capital impacts of a large-scale, community-driven development project in the Philippines in which communities competed for block grants for infrastructure investment. The analysis uses a unique data set of about 2,100 households collected before the project...

Tobacco use, which is rising quickly in developing countries, kills 5.4 million people a year worldwide. This paper explores the impacts of mobile phone ownership on tobacco consumption. Indeed, mobile phone ownership could affect tobacco consumption because individuals might pay for their...

We explore the relationship between transaction costs and generalized trust. Using panel data from 2100 households in 135 poor rural communities of the Philippines, we show that where costs of interactions are reduced there is an increase in generalized trust. These results have implications for...

Using spatially coded data on mobile phone coverage and panel data from 2100 households in 135 communities of the Philippines, we estimate the impact of mobile phone ownership on tobacco consumption. Purchasing a mobile phone leads to a 17.1% decrease in tobacco consumption per adult over the...