Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique

Oriana Bandiera and Imran Rasul

No 3341, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: 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 that 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 hetereogeneity and for endogenous group formation.

Keywords: Social Networks; Technology adoption; Information sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (67)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP3341 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique (2006)
Working Paper: Social Networks and Technology Adoption in Northern Mozambique (2002)
Working Paper: Social networks and technology adoption in Northern Mozambique (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3341

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP3341
orders@cepr.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).