Development Policy through the Lens of Social Structure

Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Erika Deserranno, Ricardo Morel, Imran Rasul and Munshi Sulaiman

STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series from Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE

Abstract: This paper studies how the social structure of village economies affects policy implementation by local agents. We randomly select one of two viable candidates to deliver an agricultural extension program in rural Ugandan villages. We show that delivery agents favor their own social ties over ex-ante identical farmers connected to the other (non-selected) candidate and that this is inconsistent with output maximization or targeting the poorest. Favoritism disappears when the potential delivery agents belong to the same social group. Using the randomised allocation of the program across villages, we show how unobserved social structures explain the variation in delivery rates and program effectiveness that we often observe in the data.

Keywords: social structure; development policy; social ties; agriculture extension (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 O10 O20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Development Policy through the Lens of Social Structure (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:stieop:69

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