Social and Professional Networks

Firm-to-firm trade represents a large part of economic activity, but we know little about how effective firms are in finding good training partners. Do firm-to-firm search frictions lead to inefficient matches between suppliers and clients?

Female-owned businesses continue to be smaller and less profitable than male-owned firms. We conduct an RCT in Ghana on a sample of 1,771 growth-oriented female entrepreneurs to investigate the effect of online networking groups on firm performance.

Can access to online networking opportunities combined with legal support increase business collaborations and improve business performance?

In this pilot study, we demonstrate that low-skilled day labourers who are socially connected to their employers have significantly higher chances of securing jobs, irrespective of having lower productivity than their lesser connected counterparts in Pakistan.

Identifying high-growth microentrepreneurs in low-income countries remains a challenge due to a scarcity of verifiable information.

Knowledge sharing between employees has long been viewed as a major driver of firm productivity growth, and the strength of productivity spill-overs within firms is a common measure of knowledge sharing.

This paper documents strong pressure on productive entrepreneurs in a developing country setting to share their income. This ‘kinship tax’ can distort productive decisions, including investment.

Existing theories of democratic reversals emphasize that elites mount actions like coups when democracy is particularly threatening to their interests.