Social networks are an important mechanism for diffusing information when institutions are missing, but there may be distributional consequences from targeting only central nodes in a network. After implementing a social network census, one of three village-level treatments determined which treated nodes in the village received information about composting: random assignment, nodes with the highest degree, or nodes with high betweenness. We then look at how information diffuses through the network. We find information diffusion declines with social distance, suggesting frictions in the diffusion of information. Aggregate knowledge about the technology did not differ across targeting strategies, but targeting nodes using betweenness measures in village-level networks excludes less-connected nodes from new information. Women farmers are less likely to receive information when betweenness centrality is used in targeting, suggesting there are important gender differences, not only in the relationship between social distance and diffusion, but also in the social learning process.
In Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and Mali, we have continued our global tradition of rigorous, applicable research by building foundational research capacity and conducting evaluations in areas of pressing national concern. Examples of our work below offer promising insights into everyday issues that affect the lives of the Francophone West African poor.
Research shows that when people participate in the financial system, they are better able to manage risk, start or invest in a business, and fund large expenditures like education or a home improvement. Increasing women’s financial inclusion is especially important as women disproportionately experience poverty, stemming from unequal divisions of labor and a lack of control over economic resources. While demand and supply side barriers to women’s financial inclusion remain, this review shows that appropriate financial product design can help overcome some of these barriers. This review is organized by product and presents the existing evidence on the impact of savings, credit, payments, and insurance products on women’s economic empowerment outcomes, as well as the remaining open research questions in each area. The studies included in this review are limited to those designed as randomized control trials (RCTs), widely considered to be the gold standard in impact evaluation methodology.
We study how healthcare subsidies and improved information affect over- and under-use of primary healthcare in a randomized control trial of 1544 children in Mali. In a dynamic model of healthcare demand, misuse relative to policymaker preferences (here given by WHO care-seeking standards) arises from seeking care too early or too late during an illness spell. Using nine weeks of daily data, we show that the barrier to optimal care seeking is cost, not information: subsidies increase demand by over 250%, but overuse is rare with or without the subsidy. Information, contrary to intent, appears to increase underuse, as our model predicts.
We examine whether returns to capital are higher for farmers who borrow than for those who do not, a direct implication of many credit market models. We measure the difference in returns through a two‐stage loan and grant experiment. We find large positive investment responses and returns to grants for a random (representative) sample of farmers, showing that liquidity constraints bind. However, we find zero returns to grants for a sample of farmers who endogenously did not borrow. Thus we find important heterogeneity, even conditional on a wide range of observed characteristics, which has critical implications for theory and policy.
