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Field
Trial Title
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Conventions, Information Asymmetry, and Intergenerational Information Flow:
Theory and Experiment in Liberia
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Conventions, Information Asymmetry, and Flow of Information in Households:
Theory and Experiment in Liberia
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Abstract
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Before
It remains a puzzle how collective decisions upon private information are made in households and communities in developing countries. Recent evidence points to the interplay of social roles and individual incentives to transmit information. In the spirit of Akerlof (1970), this paper proposes a framework to understand three essential aspects of information aggregation, when there are information asymmetries between individuals under social conventions: (1) acquisition of attributes (e.g. skills); (2) efforts in information transmission (e.g. communication); and (3) resulting flow of information. The framework rationalizes mixed results about the efficiencies in achieving societal and household-level objectives, and highlights the tradeoffs in different approaches to informational interventions taking into account the possibilities of miscoordination among agents. Within the context of a school-based agricultural education program in Liberia that aims to empower students as agents of knowledge diffusion, I design a household-level experiment to study intergenerational information flow. The experiment (1) tests the existence of information asymmetries in crucial decisions; and (2) contrasts different approaches that induce information transmission in students' households and communities.
This experiment is embedded in the context of a general randomized evaluation of the program (AEARCTR-0006671).
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After
It remains a puzzle how collective decisions upon private information are made in households and communities in developing countries. Recent evidence points to the interplay of social roles and individual incentives to transmit information. In the spirit of Akerlof (1970), this paper proposes a framework to understand three essential aspects of information aggregation, when there are information asymmetries about changes in attributes of individuals under social conventions: (1) acquisition of attributes (e.g. skills); (2) efforts in interactions (e.g. communication); and (3) resulting flow of new information. The framework suggests tradeoffs for communities in achieving societal and micro-level objectives, and highlights tradeoffs in different approaches to informational interventions considering the possibilities of miscoordination among agents. Within the context of a school-based agricultural education program in Liberia that aims to empower students as agents of knowledge diffusion, I design a household-level experiment to study intergenerational information flow. The experiment (1) tests the existence of information asymmetries in crucial decisions; and (2) contrasts different approaches that induce information transmission in students' households and communities.
This experiment is embedded in the context of a general randomized evaluation of the program (AEARCTR-0006671).
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Last Published
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August 15, 2021 09:19 PM
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August 19, 2021 12:18 AM
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Additional Keyword(s)
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Before
Intergenerational communication; Agricultural extension; Youth empowerment; Rural education; Gender
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Intrahousehold flow of information; Intergenerational communication; Youth empowerment
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Keyword(s)
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Before
Agriculture, Behavior, Education
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Agriculture, Behavior, Education, Gender
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