Abstract
Despite living in high-density cities, low-income job seekers might only be familiar with a small number of urban locations. We will use a field experiment in Nairobi, Kenya to document how exploration frictions may limit the potential benefits of cities. Residents of informal settlements in Nairobi have never been to many neighborhoods near their homes; on average a respondent has not been to 1 in 3 of the neighborhoods within the distance that they travel for work. Additionally, respondents are reluctant to travel to neighborhoods they have not been to previously; conditional on neighborhood fixed effects, respondents must be paid more in order to accept work in an unfamiliar location. Through our experiment, we will first test whether exploration frictions are amplified by present bias, projection bias, and attention bias. We will then test whether inducing familiarity with neighborhoods reduces the familiarity premium and increases demand for job search in previously unfamiliar, but known, locations.