Social Learning among Urban Manufacturing Firms: Energy-Efficient Motors in Bangladesh

Ritam Chaurey, Gaurav Nayyar, Siddharth Sharma and Eric Verhoogen

No 34296, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Knowledge spillovers among firms are widely viewed as a key driver of agglomeration and growth, but are difficult to estimate cleanly. We randomly allocated an energy-efficient motor --- a “servo'” motor --- among leather-goods firms in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and tracked adoption, information flows, beliefs about energy savings, and other variables. We use the difference between actual exposure and expected exposure (from simulated randomization draws) to identify the effect of exposure. We find a robust positive effect of exposure to treated neighbors within a small geographic area (500 meters in our baseline specification) on information flows and adoption. A marginal value of public funds (MVPF) calculation taking learning spillovers into account yields a significantly larger value than one considering only treated firms and suggests that adoption subsidies would be a cost-effective policy intervention.

JEL-codes: L23 L67 O12 O14 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
Note: DEV ITI PR
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