Imran Rasul

Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique

Despite their potentially strong impact on poverty, agricultural innovations are often adopted slowly. Using a unique household dataset on sunflower adoption in Mozambique, we analyse whether and how individual adoption decisions depend upon the choices of others in the same social networks. Since farmers anticipate that they will share information with others, we expect farmers to be more likely to adopt when they know many other adopters. Dynamic considerations, however, suggest that farmers who know many adopters might strategically delay adoption to free-ride on the information gathered by others. We present empirical evidence that shows that the relationship between the probability of adoption and the number of known adopters is shaped as an inverse-U. In line with information sharing, the network effect is stronger for farmers who report discussing agriculture with others. The data contains information which is needed to ameliorate the identification issues that commonly arise in this context. In particular social networks are precisely identified, and in addition we can control for village heterogeneity and endogenous group formation.

Social Connections and Incentives in the Workplace: Evidence From Personnel Data

We present evidence on the effect of social connections between workers and managers on productivity in the workplace. To evaluate whether the existence of social connections is beneficial to the firms overall performance, we explore how the effects of social connections vary with the strength of managerial incentives and workers ability. To do so, we combine panel data on individual workers productivity from personnel records with a natural field experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial incentives, from fixed wages to bonuses based on the average productivity of the workers managed. We find that when managers are paid fixed wages, they favor workers to whom they are socially connected irrespective of the workers ability, but when they are paid performance bonuses, they target their effort toward high ability workers irrespective of whether they are socially connected to them or not. Although social connections increase the performance of connected workers, we find that favoring connected workers is detrimental for the firms overall performance.

Field Experiments in Labor Economics

We overview the use of field experiments in labor economics. We showcase studies that highlight the central advantages of this methodology, which include: (i) using economic theory to design the null and alternative hypotheses; (ii) engineering exogenous variation in real world economic environments to establish causal relations and learn about the underlying mechanisms; and (iii) engaging in primary data collection and often working closely with practitioners. To highlight the potential for field experiments to inform issues in labor economics, we organize our discussion around the individual life cycle. We therefore consider field experiments related to the accumulation of human capital, the demand and supply of labor, and behavior within firms, and close with a brief discussion of the nascent literature of field experiments related to household decision making.

The Economics of the Marriage Contract: Theories and Evidence

We analyze the role of the marriage contract. We first formalize three prominent hypotheses on why people marry: marriage provides an exogenous payoff to married partners, it serves as a commitment device, and it serves as a signaling device. For each theory we analyze how a reduction in the costs of divorce affects the propensity to divorce for couples at any given duration of marriage. We then use individual marriage and divorce certificate data from the United States to bring these alternative views of the marriage contract to bear on the data. We exploit variations in the timing of the adoption of unilateral divorce laws across states to proxy a one‐off and permanent reduction in divorce costs. The results suggest that the dominant reason that couples enter into a marriage contract is that it serves as a commitment device.

Empowering adolescent girls : evidence from a randomized control trial in Uganda

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Empowering adolescent girls : evidence from a randomized control trial in Uganda, conducted in the year between June and September 2008, in Uganda. The study observed that nearly 60 percent of Ugandas population is aged below 20. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with HIV, early pregnancy and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and/or vocational skills is however uncertain. The program significantly increases self-reported entrepreneurial skills. There is a 4.2 percentage point increase in likelihood of participation in income earning activities, which represents a 32 percent increase. Almost all of this increase is seen in self-employment activities. Funding for the study derives from Bank Netherlands, MasterCard, Nike, The Gender Action Plan, improving institutions for Pro-Poor Growth at DFID.

Crime and the Depenalization of Cannabis Possession: Evidence from a Policing Experiment

We evaluate the impact on crime of a localized policing experiment that depenalized the possession of small quantities of cannabis in the London borough of Lambeth. We find that depenalization policy caused the police to reallocate effort toward nondrug crime. Despite the overall fall in crime attributable to the policy, we find that the total welfare of local residents likely fell, as measured by house prices. We shed light on what would be the impacts on crime of a citywide depenalization policy by developing and calibrating a structural model of the market for cannabis and crime.

The evolution of cooperative norms: Evidence from a natural field experiment

Abstract We document the establishment and evolution of a cooperative norm among workers using evidence from a natural field experiment on a leading UK farm. Workers are paid according to a relative incentive scheme under which increasing individual effort raises a workers own pay but imposes a negative externality on the pay of all co-workers, thus creating a rationale for cooperation. As a counterfactual, we analyze worker behavior when workers are paid piece rates and thus have no incentive to cooperate.We find that workers cooperate more as their exposure to the relative incentive scheme increases. We also find that individual and group exposure are substitutes, namely workers who work alongside colleagues with higher exposure cooperate more. Shocks to the workforce in the form of new worker arrivals disrupt cooperation in the short term but are then quickly integrated into the norm. Individual exposure, group exposure, and the arrival of new workers have no effect on productivity when workers and paid piece rates and there is no incentive to cooperate.

Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa ¤

Women in developing countries are disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage and childbearing interact to limit their investments into human capital and enforce dependence on men. We evaluate a multifaceted policy intervention attempting to jump-start adolescent womens empowerment in Uganda, a context in which 60% of the population are aged below twenty. The intervention aims to relax human capital constraints that adolescent girls face by simultaneously providing them vocational training and information on sex, reproduction and marriage. We find that four years post-intervention, adolescent girls in treated communities are 4.9pp more likely to engage in income generating activities, corresponding to a 48% increase over baseline levels, and an impact almost entirely driven by their greater engagement in self-employment. Teen pregnancy falls by a third, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation also falls rapidly. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops by close to a third and aspired ages at which to marry and start childbearing move forward. The results highlight the potential of a multifaceted program that provides skills transfers as a viable and cost effective policy intervention to improve the economic and social empowerment of adolescent girls over a four year horizon.

Transactions Costs in Charitable Giving: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

Abstract In large-scale fundraising campaigns based on direct mailings, typically less than 5% of individuals donate to the charitable cause. We present evidence from two field experiments designed to measure the existence of transaction costs that inhibit charitable giving in such fundraising campaigns, and shed light on the nature of such transaction costs. The experiments are designed in conjunction with the Bavarian State Opera House. The first mail-out experiment was implemented over two stages using a within-subject design. We develop a theoretical framework that makes precise the identifying assumptions under which we can exploit this two-stage design to measure the following structural parameters among potential donors: (i) the share of donors who would make a strictly positive donation in the complete absence of transaction costs and (ii) the probability that a potential donor has sufficiently low transactions costs to make a strictly positive donation. Our results imply response rates to mail-out solicitations would almost double in the complete absence of transaction costs. The second field experiment provides more evidence on the nature of transaction costs. We distinguish between ex ante transaction costs, which prevent the choice problem from being considered and ex post transaction costs, which prevent choices being implemented. We find that the likelihood of a donation being made increases by 26% in response to even a small reduction in ex post transaction costs.

The role of the agent's outside options in principal-agent relationships

We consider a principal-agent model of adverse selection where, in order to trade with the principal, the agent must undertake a relationship-specific investment which affects his outside option to trade, i.e. the payoff that he can obtain by trading with an alternative principal. This creates a distinction between the agent’s ex ante (before investment) and ex post (after investment) outside options to trade. We investigate the consequences of this distinction, and show that whenever an agents ex ante and ex post outside options differ, this equips the principal with an additional tool for screening among different agent types, by randomizing over the probability with which trade occurs once the agent has undertaken the investment. In turn, this may enhance the e¢ciency of the optimal second-best contract.