Close
I am a Phd candidate at University College London and a Senior Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
My main field of research is development economics, with interests extending to social networks and Applied microeconomics more broadly. My job market paper considers how socially close and socially distant connections contribute to risk sharing in poor, rural communities.
In other research, I study how group size affects risk sharing, how household choices are distorted by incorrect knowledge of the child health production function, and the relationship between family size and education choices. I have also conducted a review of methods for social networks data.
- Development Economics
- Applied Microeconomics
- Social Networks
"Socially Close and Socially Distant Connections in Risk Sharing"
Abstract
This paper studies the role of socially close and socially
distant connections in providing informal risk sharing in social
networks.
Socially close connections are considered to be more
effective in enforcing informal risk sharing arrangements, but they may
be more economically similar and less numerous than socially distant
connections, and hence provide fewer risk sharing opportunities. A
simple theoretical framework incorporating these features indicates that
larger networks should yield better risk sharing. More socially close
connections are beneficial. However, socially distant connections become
more valuable when incomes of socially close households are
sufficiently positively correlated. I then test the predictions of this
model using data on a large number of village based extended family
networks in rural Mexico. I document that the incomes of socially close
households covary more positively than those of socially distant
households. I find that households in large networks achieve better risk
sharing. However, this effect is driven primarily by socially distant
connections, suggesting that opportunities for risk sharing are
relatively more important in this context.
- Prof. Orazio Attanasio (University College London)
- Prof. Imran Rasul (University College London)
- Dr. Marcos Vera-Hernandez (University College London)
error message: tags
