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Fields Changed

Registration

Field Before After
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date October 01, 2016
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) 417 firms
Was attrition correlated with treatment status? No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 417 firms
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms 15% of firms invited to training, 50% of firms received demand shock (cross-cut)
Is there a restricted access data set available on request? No
Program Files No
Data Collection Completion Date October 01, 2016
Is data available for public use? No
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract This paper reports on an experiment that brings insights from the literature on demand-side determinants of technology adoption to the study of peer-to-peer diffusion. We develop a custom weaving technique and randomly seed training into a real network of garment making firm owners in Ghana. Training leads to limited adoption among trainees, but little to no diffusion to non-trainees. In a second phase, we cross-randomize demand for the technique. Demand shocks increase adoption of the technology in both groups and diffusion to untrained firms, generated by a pattern in which trained firm owners teach approximately 400% more of their peers if they are randomly assigned to the demand intervention. We find no evidence that our main effects are driven by differences in ability (learning-by-doing) or other adoption-based mechanisms. Rather, our findings are most consistent with the demand intervention generating differential willingness to diffuse among potential teachers.
Paper Citation Morgan Hardy, Jamie McCasland, It takes two: Experimental evidence on the determinants of technology diffusion, Journal of Development Economics, Volume 149, 2021, 102600, ISSN 0304-3878.
Paper URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387820301759
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