Essays on Social Networks in Development Economics

Social Networks in Development Economics;Social Sciences (General);Social Sciences;Economics

Griffith, MichaelThornton, Rebecca Lynn ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Social Networks in Development Economics;    Social Sciences (General);    Social Sciences;    Economics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/140953/alangrif_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Over the past decades, economists have increasingly taken note of the importance of social networks in determining choices and behaviors in a wide variety of settings. More recently, researchers have taken note of the role of network endogeneity--that is, people choosing their peer groups--in informing our understanding of many relationships. This dissertation consists of three chapters that investigate the role of social networks in economics, with a focus on applications in developing-country settings. Chapter 1 derives a new methodology to predict the effects of policies that assign people to groups, while taking account of the fact that actors choose their peers and peers affect outcomes. Chapter 2 investigates the sensitivity of estimate of the effect of peers to a particular and widely-used data collection process. In joint work, Chapter 3 investigates the eects of a particular development program targeted at adolescent girls, taking account of the fact that program assignment affects patterns of interaction. Taken together, these chapters form the beginning of a long-term research agenda that seeks to understand the causes and effects of social networks in development economics.